1.
Khan (title)
–
Khan is originally a title for a sovereign or a military ruler, widely used by Turkic and later medieval nomadic Mongolian tribes living to the north of China. Khan also occurs as a title in the Xianbei confederation for their chief between 283 and 289, the Rourans were the first people who used the titles khagan and khan for their emperors. Subsequently the Ashina adopted the title and brought it to the rest of Asia, in the middle of the sixth century the Iranians knew of a Kagan – King of the Turks. Khan now has many equivalent meanings such as commander, leader, as of 2015 khans exist in South Asia, Middle East, Central Asia, Eastern Europe and Turkey. The female alternatives are Khatun, Khatoon and Khanum and these titles or names are sometimes written as Han, Kan, Hakan, Hanum, or Hatun and as xan, xanım. Khagan is rendered as Khan of Khans and it was the title of Chinese Emperor Emperor Taizong of Tang, and also the title of Genghis Khan and of the persons selected to rule the Mongol Empire. For instance Möngke Khan and Ogedei Khan would be Khagans but not Chagatai Khan, some managed to establish principalities of some importance for a while, as their military might repeatedly proved a serious threat to such empires as China and kingdoms in Central Asia. One of the earliest notable examples of such principalities in Europe was Danube Bulgaria, Khan was the official title of the ruler until 864 AD, when Kniaz Boris adopted the Eastern Orthodox faith. The title Khan became unprecedently prominent when the Mongol Temüjin created the Mongol empire, the greatest land empire the world has ever seen and his title was khagan, or Khan of Khans, but has often been abbreviated to Khan or described as Great Khan. The great leader was regarded as a khan in the middle east, ming Dynasty Chinese Emperors also used the term Xan to denote brave warriors and rulers. The title Khan was used to designate the greatest rulers of the Jurchens, while most Afghan principalities were styled emirate, there was a khanate of ethnic Uzbeks in Badakhshan since 1697. For example, in present Armenia and nearby territories to the left and right, diverse khanates existed in Dagestan, Azerbaijan, including Baku, Ganja, Jawad, Quba, Salyan, Shakki and Shirvan=Shamakha, Talysh, Nakhichevan and Karabakh. The most important of these states were, Khanate of Kazan, sibir Khanate Astrakhan Khanate Crimean Khanate. The ruling descendants of the branch of Genghis Khans dynasty are referred to as the Great Khans. The title Khan of Khans was among numerous titles used by the Sultans of the Ottoman empire as well as the rulers of the Golden Horde and its descendant states. The title Khan was also used in the Seljuk Turk dynasties of the near-east to designate a head of multiple tribes, clans or nations, jurchen and Manchu rulers also used the title Khan, for example, Nurhaci was called Genggiyen Han. Rulers of the Göktürks, Avars and Khazars used the higher title Kaghan, see the main article for more details. Khan-i-Khanan was a given to the commander-in-chief of the army of the Mughals
Khan (title)
–
Eurasia on the eve of the Mongol invasions, c. AD 1200.
Khan (title)
–
Navaanneren, Minister of the Interior, who along with the 23rd Tushiyetu Khan Dorjsurenkhoroljav (1908-1937) was the last Khan in Mongolia. He was executed during the
great purges of 1937.
Khan (title)
–
Mongol Empire's largest extent outlined in red; the
Timurid Empire is shaded
Khan (title)
–
Two Khans in Turkoman Tribal Costume, One of 274 Vintage Photographs.
Brooklyn Museum.
2.
Tsar
–
Tsar /zɑːr/ or /tsɑːr/, also spelled tzar, csar, or czar, is a title used to designate certain Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, occasionally, the word could be used to designate other secular supreme rulers. Simeon II, the last Tsar of Bulgaria, is the last person to have borne the title Tsar, the title Tsar is derived from the Latin title for the Roman emperors, Caesar. In the history of the Greek language, basileus had originally meant something like potentate and it gradually approached the meaning of king in the Hellenistic Period, and it came to designate emperor after the inception in the Roman Empire. Thus, tsar was not only used as an equivalent of Latin imperator but was used to refer to Biblical rulers. From this ambiguity, the development has moved in different directions in the different Slavic languages, thus, the Bulgarian language and Russian language no longer use tsar as an equivalent of the term emperor/imperator as it exists in the West European tradition. Currently, the term refers to native sovereigns, ancient and Biblical rulers, as well as monarchs in fairy tales. The title of king is sometimes perceived as alien and is by some Russian-speakers reserved for European royalty, foreign monarchs of imperial status, both inside and outside of Europe, ancient as well as modern, are generally called imperator, rather than tsar. Biblical rulers in Serbian are called цар and in Croatian kralj, in the Polish language however tsar is always used as imperator, never as king. The term tsar is very used to refer to the Russian rulers after Peter the Great. In 705 Emperor Justinian II named Tervel of Bulgaria Caesar, the first foreigner to receive this title, the sainted Boris I is sometimes retrospectively referred to as tsar, because at his time Bulgaria was converted to Christianity. However, the tsar was actually adopted and used for the first time by his son Simeon I. Since in Byzantine political theory there was place for two emperors, Eastern and Western, the Bulgarian ruler was crowned basileus as a spiritual son of the Byzantian basileus. In Latin sources the Emperor of Bulgaria is sometimes designated Emperor of Zagora, various additional epithets and descriptions apart, the official style read Emperor and autocrat of all Bulgarians and Greeks. During the five-century period of Ottoman rule in Bulgaria, the sultan was referred to as tsar. This may be related to the fact that he had claimed the legacy of the Byzantine Empire or to the fact that the sultan was called Basileus in medieval Greek, after Bulgarias liberation from the Ottomans in 1878, its new monarchs were at first autonomous prince. With the declaration of independence, Ferdinand I of Bulgaria adopted the traditional title tsar in 1908. However, these titles were not generally perceived as equivalents of emperor any longer, in the Bulgarian as in the Greek vernacular, the meaning of the title had shifted
Tsar
–
Reception of the Tsar of Russia in the
Moscow Kremlin.
Tsar
–
Redrawing of the
epitaph of ichirgu boila Mostich. Translation (the title Tsar is enclosed): “Here lies
Mostich who was
ichirgu-boil during the reigns of Tsar Simeon and Tsar Peter. At the age of eighty he forsook the rank of ichirgu boila and all of his possessions and became a monk. And so ended his life.” Now in the Museum of Preslav.
Tsar
–
Tsar
Dušan of Serbia
Tsar
–
Władysław IV of Poland was the Tsar of Russia during the
Time of Troubles, when the
Polish forces occupied
Moscow.
3.
Golden Horde
–
The Golden Horde was a Mongol and later Turkicized khanate established in the 13th century and originating as the northwestern sector of the Mongol Empire. With the fragmentation of the Mongol Empire after 1259 it became a functionally separate khanate and it is also known as the Kipchak Khanate or as the Ulus of Jochi. After the death of Batu Khan in 1255, his dynasty flourished for a century, until 1359. The Hordes military power peaked during the reign of Uzbeg, who adopted Islam, the territory of the Golden Horde at its peak included most of Eastern Europe from the Urals to the Danube River, and extended east deep into Siberia. In the south, the Golden Hordes lands bordered on the Black Sea, the Caucasus Mountains, the khanate experienced violent internal political disorder beginning in 1359, before it briefly reunited under Tokhtamysh. However, soon after the 1396 invasion of Timur, the founder of the Timurid Empire, at the start of the 15th century the Horde began to fall apart. By 1466 it was being referred to simply as the Great Horde, within its territories there emerged numerous predominantly Turkic-speaking khanates. These internal struggles allowed the northern state of Muscovy to rid itself of the Tatar Yoke at the Great stand on the Ugra river in 1480. The Crimean Khanate and the Kazakh Khanate, the last remnants of the Golden Horde, in any event, it was not until the 16th century that Russian chroniclers begin explicitly using the term Golden Horde to refer to this particular successor khanate of the Mongol Empire. The first known use of the term, in 1565, in the Russian chronicle History of Kazan, applied it to the Ulus of Batu and its left wing was referred to as the Blue Horde in Russian chronicles and as the White Horde in Timurid sources. Western scholars have tended to follow the Timurid sources nomenclature and call the left wing the White Horde, the khanate apparently used the term White Horde to refer to its right wing, which was situated in Batus home base in Sarai and controlled the ulus. However, the designations Golden Horde, Blue Horde, and White Horde have not been encountered in the sources of the Mongol period. At his death in 1227, Genghis Khan divided the Mongol Empire amongst his four sons as appanages, Jochi was the eldest, but he died six months before Genghis. In 1235, Batu with the great general Subedei began an invasion westwards, first conquering the Bashkirs, from there he conquered some of the southern steppes of present-day Ukraine in 1237, forcing many of the local Cumans to retreat westward. The military campaign against the Kypchaks and Cumans had started under Jochi, by 1239 a large portion of Cumans were driven out of the Crimea peninsula, and it became one of the appanages of the Mongol Empire. The remnants of the Crimean Cumans survived in the Crimean mountains, moving north, Batu began the Mongol invasion of Rus and for three years subjugated the principalities of former Kievan Rus, whilst his cousins Möngke, Kadan, and Güyük moved southwards into Alania. Using the migration of the Cumans as their casus belli, the Mongols continued west, raiding Poland and Hungary and culminating in the battles of Legnica, in 1241, however, Ögedei Khan died in the Mongolia homeland. Batu turned back from his siege of Vienna to take part in disputing the succession, the Mongol armies would never again travel so far west
Golden Horde
–
Jochi Mausoleum,
Karagandy Region
Golden Horde
–
Flag of the Golden Horde, as shown in the
Catalan Atlas (other sources illustrate that the Golden Horde was known for the yellow color of the khan's flag and trappings.)
Golden Horde
–
Batu Khan establishes the Golden Horde.
Golden Horde
–
The Golden Horde army defeats the
Ilkhanate at the
battle of Terek in 1262. Many of Hulagu's men drowned in Terek River while withdrawing.
4.
Coronation
–
The ceremony can also be conducted for the monarchs consort, either simultaneously with the monarch or as a separate event. A ceremony without the placement of a crown on the head is known as an enthronement. Coronations are still observed in the United Kingdom, Tonga, in addition to investing the monarch with symbols of state, Western-style coronations have often traditionally involve anointing with holy oil, or chrism as it is often called. Wherever a ruler is anointed in this way, as in Great Britain and Tonga, some other lands use bathing or cleansing rites, the drinking of a sacred beverage, or other religious practices to achieve a comparable effect. Such acts symbolise the granting of divine favour to the monarch within the relevant spiritual-religious paradigm of the country, in the past, concepts of royalty, coronation and deity were often inexorably linked. Rome promulgated the practice of worship, in Medieval Europe. Coronations were once a direct expression of these alleged connections. Thus, coronations have often been discarded altogether or altered to reflect the nature of the states in which they are held. However, some monarchies still choose to retain an overtly religious dimension to their accession rituals, others have adopted simpler enthronement or inauguration ceremonies, or even no ceremony at all. In non-Christian states, coronation rites evolved from a variety of sources, buddhism, for instance, influenced the coronation rituals of Thailand, Cambodia and Bhutan, while Hindu elements played a significant role in Nepalese rites. The ceremonies used in modern Egypt, Malaysia, Brunei and Iran were shaped by Islam, Coronations, in one form or another, have existed since ancient times. Egyptian records show coronation scenes, such as that of Seti I in 1290 BC, judeo-Christian scriptures testify to particular rites associated with the conferring of kingship, the most detailed accounts of which are found in II Kings 11,12 and II Chronicles 23,11. Following the assumption of the diadem by Constantine, Roman and Byzantine emperors continued to wear it as the symbol of their authority. Although no specific coronation ceremony was observed at first, one gradually evolved over the following century, the emperor Julian was hoisted upon a shield and crowned with a gold necklace provided by one of his standard-bearers, he later wore a jewel-studded diadem. Later emperors were crowned and acclaimed in a manner, until the momentous decision was taken to permit the Patriarch of Constantinople to physically place the crown on the emperors head. Historians debate when exactly this first took place, but the precedent was established by the reign of Leo II. This ritual included recitation of prayers by the Byzantine prelate over the crown, after this event, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the ecclesiastical element in the coronation ceremonial rapidly develop. This was usually performed three times, following this, the king was given a spear, and a diadem wrought of silk or linen was bound around his forehead as a token of regal authority
Coronation
–
The coronation of
Charles VII of France (1429), detail of the painting Jeanne d'Arc (1886–1890) by
Jules Eugène Lenepveu.
Coronation
–
.
Miniature of
Charlemagne crowned emperor by
Pope Leo III, from Chroniques de France ou de Saint Denis, vol. 1; France, second quarter of 14th century.
Coronation
–
Roger II of Sicily receiving his crown directly from
Jesus Christ, mosaic from
Martorana, Palermo
Coronation
–
An ancient coronation from India
5.
Jochi
–
Jochi was the eldest son of Genghis Khan, and presumably one of the four sons by his principal wife Börte, though issues concerning his paternity followed him throughout his life. An accomplished military leader, he participated in his fathers conquest of Central Asia, along with his brothers, there is some question as to Jochis true paternity. Shortly after her marriage to Genghis Khan, Börte was abducted by members of the Mergid confederation and she was given to a certain Chilger Bökh, who was the brother of the Yehe Chiledu, as a spoil of war. She remained in Chilger Bökhs captivity for a few months before she was recovered by Temüjin, shortly afterwards she gave birth to Jochi. By all accounts, Genghis Khan treated Jochi as his first son and this uncertainty about his paternity was not without consequences. In 1207 Jochi conquered several of the forest peoples in Siberia, on behalf of his father, Jochi led two campaigns against the Kyrgyz, in 1210 and in 1218. Jochi played a role in the Khwarezm war of 1219–1221 in Central Asia – his forces captured the towns of Signak, Jand. Subsequently he was given the command of operation against the city of Urgench, here the siege of the town suffered delays because Jochi engaged in extensive negotiation with the town to persuade it to surrender peacefully and to save it from destruction. Jochis brother Chagatai regarded this action as militarily unsound, Chagatai wanted to destroy the city and this difference of opinion on military affairs deepened a rift between Jochi and Chagatai. Genghis Khan intervened in the campaign and appointed Ögedei as the commander of the operation, Ögedei resumed the operations vigorously – capturing, sacking and thoroughly destroying the town and massacring its inhabitants. The differences in tactics between Jochi and Chagatai in early 1221 added to their personal quarrel about the succession, to settle the matter, Genghis Khan called the political and military council called a kurultai - a formal meeting used both in familial matters and in matters of state. As Genghis Khans first-born son, Jochi was favored to rule the clan, at the familial kurultai called in 1222, Chagatai raised the issue of Jochis legitimacy. At that meeting, Genghis Khan made it clear that Jochi was his legitimate first-born son, however, he worried that the quarrelsome nature of the two would split the empire. By early 1223 Genghis Khan had selected Ögedei, his third son, for the sake of preserving the Empire, both Jochi and Chagatai agreed, but the rift between them never healed. Their rift would later divide the European part of the Mongol Empire from its Asian part permanently. During the autumn of 1223 Genghis Khan started for Mongolia after completing the Khwarezm campaign, Ögedei, Chagatai and Tolui went with him but Jochi withdrew to his territories north of Aral and Caspian Seas. There he remained until his death and would not see his father again in his lifetime, perhaps the selection of Ögedei as a successor to Genghis Khan had greatly disappointed him, this is a probable explanation for Jochis withdrawal from court life. Though the histories are unclear, there is evidence that Jochi conspired against Genghis, when Genghis Khan returned home he sent for Jochi
Jochi
–
Statue of Jochi Khan in
Mongolia
Jochi
–
Genghis Khan seated in the center and Jochi standing in the left.
Jochi
–
A
Mughal miniature painting of
Genghis Khan his wife
Borte and their sons.
Jochi
–
Genghis Khan with his sons including Jochi.
6.
Mongolia
–
Mongolia /mɒŋˈɡoʊliə/ is a landlocked unitary sovereign state in East Asia. Its area is equivalent with the historical territory of Outer Mongolia. It is sandwiched between China to the south and Russia to the north, while it does not share a border with Kazakhstan, Mongolia is separated from it by only 36.76 kilometers. At 1,564,116 square kilometers, Mongolia is the 18th largest and it is also the worlds second-largest landlocked country behind Kazakhstan and the largest landlocked country that does not border a closed sea. The country contains very little land, as much of its area is covered by grassy steppe, with mountains to the north and west. Ulaanbaatar, the capital and largest city, is home to about 45% of the countrys population, approximately 30% of the population is nomadic or semi-nomadic, horse culture is still integral. The majority of its population are Buddhists, the non-religious population is the second largest group. Islam is the dominant religion among ethnic Kazakhs, the majority of the states citizens are of Mongol ethnicity, although Kazakhs, Tuvans, and other minorities also live in the country, especially in the west. Mongolia joined the World Trade Organization in 1997 and seeks to expand its participation in regional economic, the area of what is now Mongolia has been ruled by various nomadic empires, including the Xiongnu, the Xianbei, the Rouran, the Turkic Khaganate, and others. In 1206, Genghis Khan founded the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history. His grandson Kublai Khan conquered China to establish the Yuan dynasty, after the collapse of the Yuan, the Mongols retreated to Mongolia and resumed their earlier pattern of factional conflict, except during the era of Dayan Khan and Tumen Zasagt Khan. In the 16th century, Tibetan Buddhism began to spread in Mongolia, being led by the Manchu-founded Qing dynasty. By the early 1900s, almost one-third of the male population were Buddhist monks. After the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911, Mongolia declared independence from the Qing dynasty, shortly thereafter, the country came under the control of the Soviet Union, which had aided its independence from China. In 1924, the Mongolian Peoples Republic was declared as a Soviet satellite state, after the anti-Communist revolutions of 1989, Mongolia conducted its own peaceful democratic revolution in early 1990. This led to a multi-party system, a new constitution of 1992, homo erectus inhabited Mongolia from 850,000 years ago. Modern humans reached Mongolia approximately 40,000 years ago during the Upper Paleolithic, the Khoit Tsenkher Cave in Khovd Province shows lively pink, brown, and red ochre paintings of mammoths, lynx, bactrian camels, and ostriches, earning it the nickname the Lascaux of Mongolia. The venus figurines of Malta testify to the level of Upper Paleolithic art in northern Mongolia, the wheeled vehicles found in the burials of the Afanasevans have been dated to before 2200 BC
Mongolia
–
Deer stones in Mongolia
Mongolia
–
Flag
Mongolia
–
Pasture land in
Arkhangai Province. Mongolia was the heartland of many nomadic empires.
Mongolia
–
Mongolian ordos (palaces) were likened to "cities on the move" (
Plano Carpini).
7.
Sarai Batu
–
Located in present-day Russia, they were among the largest cities of the medieval world, with a population estimated by the 2005 Britannica at 600,000. Sarai is Persian for palace and Russian for shed, there is also a variation meaning home, similar to Sarajevo in the Balkan peninsula. Old Sarai, or Sarai Batu or Sarai-al-Maqrus was established by Mongol ruler Batu Khan in the mid-1240s, on a site east of the Akhtuba river, Sarai was the seat of Batu and his successor Berke. Under them Sarai was the capital of a great empire, the various Rus princes came to Sarai to pledge allegiance to the Khan and receive his patent of authority. The bishops of Krutitsy resided in Tsarev from 1261 to 1454 and it had probably succeeded Sarai Batu as the capital of the Golden Horde by the mid-14th century. Both cities were sacked several times, timur sacked New Sarai around 1395, and Meñli I Giray of the Crimean Khanate sacked New Sarai around 1502. The forces of Ivan IV of Russia finally destroyed Sarai after conquering the Astrakhan Khanate in 1556, in 1623-1624, a Russian merchant, Fedot Kotov, travelled to Persia via the lower Volga. He described the site of Sarai, Here by the river Akhtuba stands the Golden Horde, the khans court, palaces, and courts, and mosques are all made of stone. But now all these buildings are being dismantled and the stone is being taken to Astrakhan, since Old Sarai lies at 120 km from Astrakhan and New Sarai at 300 km, it is difficult to decide to which of these two cities this description applies. After the destruction of New Sarai, Russia established the city of Tsaritsyn to control the area. Sarai Juk was a city on the Ural River and it is often conflated with the other Sarais in historical and modern accounts. This town was the city of the Nogai Horde, one of the successors of the Golden Horde. Although sacked by the Ural Cossacks in 1580, it was used as the headquarters by some Kazakh khans
Sarai Batu
–
The domains of the Golden Horde in 1389. The gold star shows the location of New Sarai. Empty circles represent other major cities.
8.
Dynasty
–
A dynasty is a sequence of rulers from the same family, usually in the context of a feudal or monarchical system but sometimes also appearing in elective republics. The dynastic family or lineage may be known as a house, historians periodize the histories of many sovereign states, such as Ancient Egypt, the Carolingian Empire and Imperial China, using a framework of successive dynasties. As such, the dynasty may be used to delimit the era during which the family reigned and to describe events, trends. The word dynasty itself is often dropped from such adjectival references, until the 19th century, it was taken for granted that a legitimate function of a monarch was to aggrandize his dynasty, that is, to increase the territory, wealth, and power of his family members. The longest-surviving dynasty in the world is the Imperial House of Japan, dynasties throughout the world have traditionally been reckoned patrilineally, such as under the Frankish Salic law. Succession through a daughter when permitted was considered to establish a new dynasty in her husbands ruling house, however, some states in Africa, determined descent matrilineally, while rulers have at other times adopted the name of their mothers dynasty when coming into her inheritance. It is also extended to unrelated people such as poets of the same school or various rosters of a single sports team. The word dynasty derives via Latin dynastia from Greek dynastéia, where it referred to power, dominion and it was the abstract noun of dynástēs, the agent noun of dynamis, power or ability, from dýnamai, to be able. A ruler in a dynasty is referred to as a dynast. For example, following his abdication, Edward VIII of the United Kingdom ceased to be a member of the House of Windsor. A dynastic marriage is one that complies with monarchical house law restrictions, the marriage of Willem-Alexander, Prince of Orange, to Máxima Zorreguieta in 2002 was dynastic, for example, and their eldest child is expected to inherit the Dutch crown eventually. But the marriage of his younger brother Prince Friso to Mabel Wisse Smit in 2003 lacked government support, thus Friso forfeited his place in the order of succession, lost his title as a Prince of the Netherlands, and left his children without dynastic rights. In historical and monarchist references to formerly reigning families, a dynast is a member who would have had succession rights, were the monarchys rules still in force. Even since abolition of the Austrian monarchy, Max and his descendants have not been considered the rightful pretenders by Austrian monarchists, nor have they claimed that position. The term dynast is sometimes used only to refer to descendants of a realms monarchs. The term can therefore describe overlapping but distinct sets of people, yet he is not a male-line member of the royal family, and is therefore not a dynast of the House of Windsor. Thus, in 1999 he requested and obtained permission from Elizabeth II to marry the Roman Catholic Princess Caroline of Monaco. Yet a clause of the English Act of Settlement 1701 remained in effect at that time and that exclusion, too, ceased to apply on 26 March 2015, with retroactive effect for those who had been dynasts prior to triggering it by marriage to a Catholic
Dynasty
–
Charles I of England and his son, the future
James II
9.
Borjigin
–
Borjigin, is the last name of the imperial clan of Genghis Khan and his successors. The senior Borjigids provided ruling princes for Mongolia and Inner Mongolia until the 20th century, the clan formed the ruling class among the Mongols and some other peoples of Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Today, the Borjigid are found in most of Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, the patrilineage began with Blu-grey Wolf and Fallow Doe. As in The Secret History of the Mongols, their 11th generation descendant Dobu Mergens widow Alan Gua the Fair was impregnated by a ray of light and her youngest son became the ancestor of the later Borjigid. He was Bodonchar Munkhag, who along with his brothers sired the entire Mongol nation, according to Rashid-al-Din Hamadani, many of the older Mongolian clans were founded by members of the Borjigin — Barlas, Urud, Manghud, Taichiut, Chonos, Kiyat, etc. The first Khan of the Mongol was Bodonchar Munkhags great-great-grandson Khaidu Khan, khaidus grandsons Khabul Khan and Ambaghai Khan succeeded him. Thereafter, Qabuls sons, Hotula Khan and Yesugei, and great-grandson Temujin ruled the Khamag Mongol, by the unification of the Mongols in 1206, virtually all of Temujins uncles and first cousins died, and from then on only the descendants of Yesugei Baghatur formed the Borjigid. The Borjigin family ruled over the Mongol Empire from the 13th to 14th century, the rise of Genghis narrowed the scope of the Borjigid-Kiyad clans sharply. This separation was emphasized by the intermarriage of Genghiss descendants with the Barlas, Baarin, Manghud, in the western regions of the Empire, the Jurkin and perhaps other lineages near to Genghiss lineage used the clan name Kiyad but did not share in the privileges of the Genghisids. The Borjigit clan had dominated large lands stretching from Java to Iran. In 1335, with the disintegration of the Ilkhanate in Iran, descendants of Genghis Khans brothers, Hasar and Belgutei, surrendered to the Ming in the 1380s. By 1470 the Borjigin lines were weakened, and Mongolia was almost in chaos. After the breakup of the Golden Horde, the Khiyat continued to rule the Crimea and they were annexed by the Russian Empire and the Chinese. In Mongolia, the Kublaids reigned as Khagan of the Mongols, however, descendants of Ögedei, under Dayan Khan a broad Borjigid revival reestablished Borjigid supremacy among the Mongols proper. His descendants proliferated to become a new ruling class, the Borjigin clan was the strongest of the 49 Mongol banners from which the Bontoi clan proper supported and fought for their Khan and for their honor. The eastern Khorchins were under the Hasarids, and the Ongnigud, Abagha Mongols were under the Belguteids, a fragment of the Hasarids deported to Western Mongolia became the Khoshuts. The Qing dynasty respected the Borjigin family and the early emperors married the Hasarid Borjigids of the Khorchin, even among the pro-Qing Mongols, traces of the alternative tradition survived. Aci Lomi, a general, wrote his History of the Borjigid Clan in 1732–35
Borjigin
–
The
Mongol Empire, ca. 1300. The gray area is the later
Timurid empire.
Borjigin
–
Mongol Empire circa 1207
Borjigin
–
The Tumens of Mongolia Proper and vassal states of the Mongol Empire by 1400
Borjigin
–
Navaanneren, Minister of the Interior, who along with the 23rd Tushiyetu Khan Dorjsurenkhoroljav (1908–1937) was the last of the Borjigin with the title of
Khan in Mongolia. He was executed during the
great purges of 1937.
10.
Onggirat
–
The Khongirad, also known as Qongirat was one of the major divisions of the Mongol tribes. Variations on the name include Onggirat, Ongirat, Qongrat, Khungirat, Kungrad, Qunghrãt, Wangjila, Yongjilie, Qungrat, and Guangjila in Chinese sources. Their homeland was located in the vicinity of Lake Hulun in Inner Mongolia and Khalkha River in Mongolia, because the various Hongirad clans never united under a single leader, the tribe never rose to great military glory. Their greatest fame comes from being the primary consort clan of the house of Genghis Khans Mongol empire. Genghis Khans mother, great grandmother, and first wife were all Khongirads, as were many subsequent Mongol queens, during the Yuan dynasty they were given the title Lu Wang, and a few Khongirads may have migrated west into the territory of modern Uzbekistan and South Kazakhstan Province. The Khongirads are often identified as the descendants of the ancient Wuku/Wugu tribe of Tang Dynasty records, the tribes own origin myth claims that they were descended from three brothers born of a golden vessel—Jurluq Mergen, Quba Shira, and Tusbu Dau. The descendants of these formed the Hongirad tribe, but feuds quickly splintered the tribe and gave rise to the offshoot tribes of the Ikires, Olkhonud, Karanut, Gorlos. Only the descendants of Jurluq Mergen retained the name of Hongirad. One of the most famous Hongirad ancestors was Miser Ulug, an Onggirat Hercules who was super-humanly strong, many names of the 12th centurys Hongirads and their subtribes have Mongol origin, Dei Setsen — tsetsen Jurluq Mergen — zörlög mergen. In the 1680s Zasagt Khan of the Khalkha Mongolia was Shar, Hongirad — khun, khungiin, ard, swan person. Swan is one of Mongol totems, Qongliyuts — Khonkhluud, khonkh, iud or uud is plural suffix. Gorlos — Modern Southern Mongol subgroup Ikires — Ikhires, ikh, ikhes Karanut — Kharnuud, khar and they have three subgroups, Alag aduutan, alag, aduutan, piebald horse herder. Shar khonit, shar, khoni, yellow sheep breeder, ulaan zalaat, ulaan, zalaa, person who wears hat with red tassel. Today, Mongols call themselves red-tasseled Mongols because Mongols wear hat with red tassel, fire is a general symbol of eternal growth, wealth, and success and a figure of fire is used in Mongolian flag, coat of arms and Soyombo symbol. The three tongues of the flame represent the past, present, and future, shamanic practices continue in present-day Mongol culture. According to Mongol legend, two warriors named Kiyan and Negus were defeated in battle and forced to shelter in an enclosed valley called Ergune khun. After several generations the descendants of these became too numerous for the valley to support. A blacksmith came up with a solution—they would create their own way out by melting an exposed iron vein that existed in one of the encircling mountains
Onggirat
–
Empress
Radnashiri was from the Khunggirad
Onggirat
–
History of Mongolia
11.
Islam
–
Islam is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion which professes that there is only one and incomparable God and that Muhammad is the last messenger of God. It is the worlds second-largest religion and the major religion in the world, with over 1.7 billion followers or 23% of the global population. Islam teaches that God is merciful, all-powerful, and unique, and He has guided mankind through revealed scriptures, natural signs, and a line of prophets sealed by Muhammad. The primary scriptures of Islam are the Quran, viewed by Muslims as the word of God. Muslims believe that Islam is the original, complete and universal version of a faith that was revealed many times before through prophets including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses. As for the Quran, Muslims consider it to be the unaltered, certain religious rites and customs are observed by the Muslims in their family and social life, while social responsibilities to parents, relatives, and neighbors have also been defined. Besides, the Quran and the sunnah of Muhammad prescribe a comprehensive body of moral guidelines for Muslims to be followed in their personal, social, political, Islam began in the early 7th century. Originating in Mecca, it spread in the Arabian Peninsula. The expansion of the Muslim world involved various caliphates and empires, traders, most Muslims are of one of two denominations, Sunni or Shia. Islam is the dominant religion in the Middle East, North Africa, sizable Muslim communities are also found in Horn of Africa, Europe, China, Russia, Mainland Southeast Asia, Philippines, Northern Borneo, Caucasus and the Americas. Converts and immigrant communities are found in almost every part of the world, Islam is a verbal noun originating from the triliteral root s-l-m which forms a large class of words mostly relating to concepts of wholeness, submission, safeness and peace. In a religious context it means voluntary submission to God, Islām is the verbal noun of Form IV of the root, and means submission or surrender. Muslim, the word for an adherent of Islam, is the active participle of the verb form. The word sometimes has connotations in its various occurrences in the Quran. In some verses, there is stress on the quality of Islam as a state, Whomsoever God desires to guide. Other verses connect Islām and dīn, Today, I have perfected your religion for you, I have completed My blessing upon you, still others describe Islam as an action of returning to God—more than just a verbal affirmation of faith. In the Hadith of Gabriel, islām is presented as one part of a triad that also includes imān, Islam was historically called Muhammadanism in Anglophone societies. This term has fallen out of use and is said to be offensive because it suggests that a human being rather than God is central to Muslims religion
Islam
–
The
Kaaba, in
Mecca,
Hejaz region, today's
Saudi Arabia, is the
center of Islam.
Muslims from all over the world gather there to
pray in unity.
Islam
–
The dome of the
Carol I Mosque in
Constanța,
Romania, topped by the
Islamic crescent
Islam
–
Medallion showing "
Allah " (
God) in
Hagia Sophia,
Istanbul,
Turkey.
Islam
–
An
angel presenting
Muhammad and his companions with a miniature city. In the
Topkapi Palace Library,
Istanbul.
12.
Mongolian language
–
The Mongolian language is the official language of Mongolia and largest-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 10 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the Mongolian residents of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. In Mongolia, the Khalkha dialect, written in Cyrillic, is predominant, while in Inner Mongolia, some classify several other Mongolic languages like Buryat and Oirat as dialects of Mongolian, but this classification is not in line with the current international standard. Mongolian has vowel harmony and a complex structure for a Mongolic language that allows clusters of up to three consonants syllable-finally. It is an agglutinative language that relies on suffix chains in the verbal and nominal domains. While there is a word order, subject–object–predicate, ordering among noun phrases is relatively free. Verbs are marked for voice, aspect, tense, and epistemic modality/evidentiality, in sentence linking, a special role is played by converbs. Modern Mongolian evolved from Middle Mongol, the language spoken in the Mongol Empire of the 13th and 14th centuries, in the transition, a major shift in the vowel-harmony paradigm occurred, long vowels developed, the case system changed slightly, and the verbal system was restructured. Mongolian is distantly related to the Khitan language and it belongs to the Northern Asian linguistic area, including the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Korean and Japonic languages. These languages have been grouped under the still-debated Altaic language family, Mongolian literature is well attested in written form from the 13th century but has earlier Mongolic precursors in the literature of the Khitan and other Xianbei peoples. The use of Mongolian in Inner Mongolia, has witnessed periods of decline, the multilingual situation in Inner Mongolia does not appear to obstruct efforts by ethnic Mongols to preserve their language. The children of inter-ethnic Mongol-Chinese marriages also claim to be and are registered as ethnic Mongols, Mongolian belongs to the Mongolic languages. Such data might account for the development of the Mongolian dialect continuum. The status of certain varieties in the Mongolic group—whether they are distinct from Mongolian or just dialects of it—is disputed. There are at least three varieties, Oirat and Buryat, both of which are spoken in Russia, Mongolia, and China, and Ordos, spoken around Inner Mongolias Ordos City. There is no disagreement that the Khalkha dialect of the Mongolian state is Mongolian, beyond this one point, however, agreement ends. On the other hand, Luvsanvandan proposed a much broader Mongolian language consisting of a Central dialect, an Eastern dialect, a Western dialect, some Western scholars propose that the relatively well researched Ordos variety is an independent language due to its conservative syllable structure and phoneme inventory. On the other hand, the split between the past tense verbal suffixes -sŋ in the Central varieties vs. -dʒɛː in the Eastern varieties is usually seen as a stochastic difference
Mongolian language
–
Mongolian script and
Mongolian Cyrillic on
Sukhbaatar's statue in
Ulan Bator.
Mongolian language
–
Geographic distribution of Mongolic peoples (red)
Mongolian language
–
Nova N 176 found in Kyrgyzstan. The manuscript (dating to the 12th century
Western Liao) is written in the Mongolic
Khitan language using cursive
Khitan large script. It has 127 leaves and 15,000 characters.
Mongolian language
–
Edict of
Yesün Temür Khan, Emperor Taiding of Yuan (1328). Only the
'Phags-pa script retains the complete
Middle Mongol vowel system.
13.
Tatar language
–
The Tatar language is a Turkic language spoken by Volga Tatars mainly located in modern Tatarstan, Bashkortostan and Nizhny Novgorod Oblast. It should not be confused with the Crimean Tatar language, to which it is remotely related, there are more than 7 million speakers of Tatar in the world. Tatar is also native for several thousand Maris, mordvas Qaratay group also speak a variant of Kazan Tatar. In the 2010 census, 69% of Russian Tatars who responded to the question about language ability claimed a knowledge of the Tatar language, in Tatarstan, 93% of Tatars and 3, 6% of Russians did so. In neighbouring Bashkortostan, 67% of Tatars, 27% of Bashkirs, Tatar, along with Russian, is the official language of the Republic of Tatarstan. The official script of Tatar language is based on the Cyrillic script with some additional letters, the Republic of Tatarstan passed a law in 1999, which came into force in 2001, establishing an official Tatar Latin alphabet. A Russian federal law overrode it in 2002, making Cyrillic the sole official script in Tatarstan since, unofficially, other scripts are used as well, mostly Latin and Arabic. All official sources in Tatarstan must use Cyrillic on their websites, in other cases, where Tatar has no official status, the use of a specific alphabet depends on the preference of the author. The Tatar language was made a de facto official language in Russia in 1917, Tatar is also considered to have been the official language in the short-lived Idel-Ural State, briefly formed during the Russian Civil War. One should note, however, that Bolshevist Russia did not recognize official languages as such, however, in the Soviet era, Tatar was such a language in Bashkortostan, Mari El and other regions of the Russian SFSR. The usage of Tatar declined from the 1930s onwards, in the 1980s, the study and teaching of Tatar in the public education system was limited to rural schools. However, Tatar-speaking pupils had little chance of entering university because higher education was available in Russian almost exclusively, as of 2001 Tatar was considered a potentially endangered language while Siberian and Crimean Tatar languages received endangered and seriously endangered statuses, respectively. Higher education in Tatar can only be found in Tatarstan, and is restricted to the humanities, in other regions Tatar is primarily a spoken language and the number of speakers as well as their proficiency tends to decrease. Tatar is popular as a language only in Tatar-speaking areas where schools with Tatar language lessons are situated. On the other hand, Tatar is the language in use in rural districts of Tatarstan. There are three dialects of Tatar, Western, Middle, and Eastern. All of these also have subdivisions. In the Western dialect Ç is pronounced and as, there are no differences between v and w, q and k, g and ğ in the Mişär dialect
Tatar language
–
Cover page of Tatar
Yana imla book, printed with Separated Tatar language in Arabic script in 1924
Tatar language
–
The word
Qazan – قازان is written in Yaña imlâ in the semblance of a
Zilant
Tatar language
–
Pamphlet in Tatar language in Arabic script in 1778
Tatar language
–
Bilingual guide in
Kazan Metro.
14.
Tatar alphabet
–
Three scripts are currently used for the Tatar language, Arabic, Cyrillic and Latin. Before 1928, the Tatar language was written using the Arabic alphabet. The Tatar Arabic alphabet used letters such as چ and پ also found in the Persian modification of the Arabic alphabet. The writing system was inherited from Bolgar, the most ancient of Tatar literature was created in the beginning of the 13th century. Until 1905 all literature was in Old Tatar, which was evolved from the Bolgar, since 1905 gazettes came to use modern Tatar in publishing. In 1918 the alphabet was revised, a Latin alphabet was used from 1928 but superseded by a Cyrillic alphabet in 1939. The Cyrillic alphabet has been used ever since, the first printed Tatar book used the Armenian alphabet in the 17th century and was printed in Leipzig. Another is Peter the Greats Manifest, printed in Arabic script on the ship during his voyage to Astrakhan. Printed books appeared en masse in 1801 when the first private typography in Kazan appeared, the first unsuccessful attempt to publish a Tatar newspaper was in 1808, when professor of mathematics at Kazan University, I. I. Zapolsky, proposed publishing a newspaper The Kazan News in both Russian and Tatar languages, zapolskys untimely death in 1810 thwarted the project. The first successful attempt to publish a newspaper in Tatar was in 1905, on September 2, the first issue of the newspaper Nur was published in St. Petersburg by Gataulla Bayazitov. The second Tatar newspaper, Kazan Muhbire, came into existence on October 29,1905, the publisher of the newspaper was a member of the Kazan City Council, Saidgirey Alkin. The first typewriter in the Arabic alphabet was created in Tatarstan in the 1920s, the Tatar Cyrillic script requires the Russian alphabet plus 6 extra letters, Әә, Өө, Үү, Җҗ, Ңң, Һһ. Before the 1980s, in the listing of the alphabet, extra letters were placed after the Russian ones, the Keräşen Tatar ethnic group has used another Cyrillic alphabet, based on Russian, since the 19th century. This alphabet requires the Russian alphabet with pre-1917 orthography for Russian Christian religious words and Cyrillic letters А, О, У with umlauts for Tatar vowels and this alphabet is related to the Mari alphabet and was used because Christian Tatars couldnt use the Arabic script. There is ongoing confrontation with regards to adoption of the Latin script for the Tatar language, while a Tatar version of the Latin alphabet called Jaꞑalif had been in use during the 1930s, there is controversy in the matter of Latin-based Tatar alphabet for İdel-Ural Tatar. The Republic of Tatarstan passed a law in 1999 and coming into force in 2001 establishing an official Tatar Latin alphabet, a Russian federal law overrode it and criminalized Latin for official use in 2002, making Cyrillic the sole official script in Tatarstan since. This specifically targeted Tatars, but affects all other nations living within borders now recognized as Russian Federation, as of 2013, Cyrillic remains the only official script in Tatarstan
Tatar alphabet
–
Cover page of a Tatar
Yana imla book printed in 1924
Tatar alphabet
–
Tatar Latin Janalif and Tatar
Arabic script, 1927
Tatar alphabet
–
A Tatar alphabet book printed in 1778. Arabic script is used, Cyrillic text is in Russian.
15.
Chinese language
–
Chinese is a group of related, but in many cases mutually unintelligible, language varieties, forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Chinese is spoken by the Han majority and many ethnic groups in China. Nearly 1.2 billion people speak some form of Chinese as their first language, the varieties of Chinese are usually described by native speakers as dialects of a single Chinese language, but linguists note that they are as diverse as a language family. The internal diversity of Chinese has been likened to that of the Romance languages, There are between 7 and 13 main regional groups of Chinese, of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin, followed by Wu, Min, and Yue. Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, although some, like Xiang and certain Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms, all varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. Standard Chinese is a form of spoken Chinese based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. It is the language of China and Taiwan, as well as one of four official languages of Singapore. It is one of the six languages of the United Nations. The written form of the language, based on the logograms known as Chinese characters, is shared by literate speakers of otherwise unintelligible dialects. Of the other varieties of Chinese, Cantonese is the spoken language and official in Hong Kong and Macau. It is also influential in Guangdong province and much of Guangxi, dialects of Southern Min, part of the Min group, are widely spoken in southern Fujian, with notable variants also spoken in neighboring Taiwan and in Southeast Asia. Hakka also has a diaspora in Taiwan and southeast Asia. Shanghainese and other Wu varieties are prominent in the lower Yangtze region of eastern China, Chinese can be traced back to a hypothetical Sino-Tibetan proto-language. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty, as the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have sought to promulgate a unified standard. Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, in addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach, and are often also sensitive border zones. Without a secure reconstruction of proto-Sino-Tibetan, the structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, the earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BCE in the late Shang dynasty
Chinese language
–
The
Tripitaka Koreana, a Korean collection of the
Chinese Buddhist canon
Chinese language
–
Hànyǔ (Chinese) written in
traditional (left) and
simplified (right) characters
Chinese language
–
"
Preface to the Poems Composed at the Orchid Pavilion " by
Wang Xizhi, written in
semi-cursive style
16.
Russian language
–
Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
Russian language
–
Russian language street sign in
Russia.
Russian language
–
Russian minimarket in
Limassol, Cyprus; translation: "Teremok market. Russian goods. Phone number: 96 74 19 63"
Russian language
–
This page from an "ABC" book printed in Moscow in 1694 shows the letter
П.
Russian language
–
The
Ostromir Gospels of 1056 is the second oldest
East Slavic book known, one of many medieval
illuminated manuscripts preserved in the
Russian National Library.
17.
Greek language
–
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population
Greek language
–
Idealized portrayal of
Homer
Greek language
–
regions where Greek is the official language
Greek language
–
Greek language road sign, A27 Motorway, Greece
18.
Mongols
–
The Mongols are an East-Central Asian ethnic group native to Mongolia and Chinas Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. They also live as minorities in other regions of China, as well as in Russia, Mongolian people belonging to the Buryat and Kalmyk subgroups live predominantly in the Russian federal subjects of Buryatia and Kalmykia. The Mongols are bound together by a heritage and ethnic identity. Their indigenous dialects are known as the Mongolian language. The ancestors of the modern-day Mongols are referred to as Proto-Mongols, broadly defined, the term includes the Mongols proper, Buryats, Oirats, the Kalmyk people and the Southern Mongols. The latter comprises the Abaga Mongols, Abaganar, Aohans, Baarins, Gorlos Mongols, Jalaids, Jaruud, Khishigten, Khuuchid, Muumyangan, the designation Mongol briefly appeared in 8th century records of Tang China to describe a tribe of Shiwei. It resurfaced in the late 11th century during the Khitan-ruled Liao dynasty, after the fall of the Liao in 1125, the Khamag Mongols became a leading tribe on the Mongolian Plateau. However, their wars with the Jurchen-ruled Jin dynasty and the Tatar confederation had weakened them, in the thirteenth century, the word Mongol grew into an umbrella term for a large group of Mongolic-speaking tribes united under the rule of Genghis Khan. In various times Mongolic peoples have been equated with the Scythians, the Magog, based on Chinese historical texts the ancestry of the Mongolic peoples can be traced back to the Donghu, a nomadic confederation occupying eastern Mongolia and Manchuria. The identity of the Xiongnu is still debated today, although some scholars maintain that they were proto-Mongols, they were more likely a multi-ethnic group of Mongolic and Turkic tribes. It has been suggested that the language of the Huns was related to the Hünnü, the Donghu are mentioned by Sima Qian as already existing in Inner Mongolia north of Yan in 699–632 BCE along with the Shanrong. Mentions in the Yi Zhou Shu and the Classic of Mountains, the Xianbei chieftain was appointed joint guardian of the ritual torch along with Xiong Yi. These early Xianbei came from the nearby Zhukaigou culture in the Ordos Desert, where maternal DNA corresponds to the Mongol Daur people, the Zhukaigou Xianbei had trade relations with the Shang. In the late 2nd century, the Han dynasty scholar Fu Qian wrote in his commentary Jixie that Shanrong, againm in Inner Mongolia another closely connected core Mongolic Xianbei region was the Upper Xiajiadian culture where the Donghu confederation was centered. After the Donghu were defeated by Xiongnu king Modu Chanyu, the Xianbei, tadun Khan of the Wuhuan was the ancestor of the proto-Mongolic Kumo Xi. The Wuhuan are of the direct Donghu royal line and the New Book of Tang says that in 209 BCE, the Xianbei, however, were of the lateral Donghu line and had a somewhat separate identity, although they shared the same language with the Wuhuan. In 49 CE the Xianbei ruler Bianhe raided and defeated the Xiongnu, killing 2000, the Xianbei reached their peak under Tanshihuai Khan who expanded the vast, but short lived, Xianbei state. Three prominent groups split from the Xianbei state as recorded by the Chinese histories, the Rouran, the Khitan people, besides these three Xianbei groups, there were others such as the Murong, Duan and Tuoba
Mongols
–
The
Xianbei state under Tanshihuai (141–181)
Mongols
–
Asia in 500, showing the
Rouran Khaganate and its neighbors, including the Northern Wei and the Tuyuhun Khanate, all of them were established by Proto-Mongols
Mongols
–
Mongols using
Chinese gunpowder bombs during the
Mongol Invasions of Japan, 1281
Mongols
–
The Battle of Oroi-Jalatu in 1755 between the Qing and Oirat armies. The fall of the
Dzungar Khanate.
19.
Mongol Empire
–
The Mongol Empire existed during the 13th and 14th centuries and was the largest contiguous land empire in history. The Mongol Empire emerged from the unification of tribes in the Mongol homeland under the leadership of Genghis Khan. The empire grew rapidly under the rule of him and his descendants, the Toluids prevailed after a bloody purge of Ögedeid and Chagataid factions, but disputes continued even among the descendants of Tolui. Kublai successfully took power, but civil war ensued as Kublai sought unsuccessfully to control of the Chagatayid and Ögedeid families. The Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260 marked the point of the Mongol conquests and was the first time a Mongol advance had ever been beaten back in direct combat on the battlefield. In 1304, the three western khanates briefly accepted the suzerainty of the Yuan dynasty, but it was later taken by the Han Chinese Ming dynasty in 1368. What is referred to in English as the Mongol Empire was called the Ikh Mongol Uls, in the 1240s, one of Genghiss descendants, Güyük Khan, wrote a letter to Pope Innocent IV which used the preamble Dalai Khagan of the great Mongolian state. After the succession war between Kublai Khan and his brother Ariq Böke, Ariq limited Kublais power to the part of the empire. Kublai officially issued an edict on December 18,1271 to name the country Great Yuan to establish the Yuan dynasty. Some sources state that the full Mongolian name was Dai Ön Yehe Monggul Ulus, the area around Mongolia, Manchuria, and parts of North China had been controlled by the Liao dynasty since the 10th century. In 1125, the Jin dynasty founded by the Jurchens overthrew the Liao dynasty, in the 1130s the Jin dynasty rulers, known as the Golden Kings, successfully resisted the Khamag Mongol confederation, ruled at the time by Khabul Khan, great-grandfather of Temujin. The Mongolian plateau was occupied mainly by five powerful tribal confederations, Keraites, Khamag Mongol, Naiman, Mergid, khabuls successor was Ambaghai Khan, who was betrayed by the Tatars, handed over to the Jurchen, and executed. The Mongols retaliated by raiding the frontier, resulting in a failed Jurchen counter-attack in 1143, in 1147, the Jin somewhat changed their policy, signing a peace treaty with the Mongols and withdrawing from a score of forts. The Mongols then resumed attacks on the Tatars to avenge the death of their late khan, the Jin and Tatar armies defeated the Mongols in 1161. During the rise of the Mongol Empire in the 13th century and it is thought that as a result, a rapid increase in the number of war horses and other livestock significantly enhanced Mongol military strength. Known during his childhood as Temujin, Genghis Khan was the son of a Mongol chieftain, when he was young he was from one of Yesugis orphaned and deserted families, he rose very rapidly by working with Toghrul Khan of the Kerait. Kurtait was the most powerful Mongol leader during this time and was given the Chinese title Wang which means Prince, Temujin went to war with Wang Khan. After Temujin defeated Wang Khan he gave himself the name Genghis Khan and he then enlarged his Mongol state under himself and his kin
Mongol Empire
–
Mongolian tribes during the Khitan
Liao dynasty (907-1125)
Mongol Empire
Mongol Empire
–
Eurasia on the eve of the Mongol invasions, c. 1200.
Mongol Empire
–
Genghis Khan,
National Palace Museum in
Taipei, Taiwan
20.
Genghis Khan
–
Genghis Khan, born Temüjin, was the founder and Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death. He came to power by uniting many of the tribes of Northeast Asia. After founding the Empire and being proclaimed Genghis Khan, he started the Mongol invasions that conquered most of Eurasia, campaigns initiated in his lifetime include those against the Qara Khitai, Caucasus, and Khwarazmian, Western Xia and Jin dynasties. These campaigns were accompanied by large-scale massacres of the civilian populations – especially in the Khwarazmian. By the end of his life, the Mongol Empire occupied a portion of Central Asia. Before Genghis Khan died, he assigned Ögedei Khan as his successor and he died in 1227 after defeating the Western Xia. He was buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in Mongolia, many of these invasions repeated the earlier large-scale slaughters of local populations. As a result, Genghis Khan and his empire have a reputation in local histories. Beyond his military accomplishments, Genghis Khan also advanced the Mongol Empire in other ways and he decreed the adoption of the Uyghur script as the Mongol Empires writing system. He also practiced meritocracy and encouraged religious tolerance in the Mongol Empire, present-day Mongolians regard him as the founding father of Mongolia. This brought communication and trade from Northeast Asia into Muslim Southwest Asia and Christian Europe, Temüjin was related on his fathers side to Khabul Khan, Ambaghai, and Hotula Khan, who had headed the Khamag Mongol confederation and were descendants of Bodonchar Munkhag. When the Jurchen Jin dynasty switched support from the Mongols to the Tatars in 1161, Temüjins father, Yesügei, emerged as the head of the ruling Mongol clan. This position was contested by the rival Tayichiud clan, who descended directly from Ambaghai, when the Tatars grew too powerful after 1161, the Jin switched their support from the Tatars to the Keraites. Little is known about Temüjins early life, due to the lack of written records. The few sources that give insight into this period often contradict, Temüjins name was derived from the Mongol word temür meaning of iron, while jin denotes agency thus temüjin means blacksmith. Temüjin was probably born in 1162 in Delüün Boldog, near the mountain Burkhan Khaldun, the Secret History of the Mongols reports that Temüjin was born grasping a blood clot in his fist, a traditional sign that he was destined to become a great leader. He was the son of his father Yesügei who was a Kiyad chief prominent in the Khamag Mongol confederation. Temüjin was the first son of his mother Hoelun, according to the Secret History, Temüjin was named after the Tatar chief Temüjin-üge whom his father had just captured
Genghis Khan
–
Genghis Khan as portrayed in a 14th-century
Yuan era album.
Genghis Khan
–
The
Onon River, Mongolia, in autumn, the region where Temüjin was born and grew up.
Genghis Khan
–
The locations of the Mongolian tribes during the
Khitan Empire (907-1125)
Genghis Khan
–
Jurchen inscription (1196) in Mongolia relating to Genghis Khan's alliance with the Jin against the Tatars.
21.
Volga Bulgaria
–
Information from first-hand sources on Volga Bulgaria is rather sparse. As no authentic Bulgar records have survived, most of our information comes from contemporary Arabic, some information is provided by excavations. It is thought that the territory of Volga Bulgaria was originally settled by Finno-Ugric peoples, the Bulgars of Kubrats son and appointed heir Batbayan Bezmer moved from the Azov region in about AD660, commanded by the Kazarig Khagan Kotrag to whom he had surrendered. They reached Idel-Ural in the century, where they became the dominant population at the end of the 9th century. Most scholars agree that the Volga Bulgars were subject to the Khazarian Empire until the mid 10th century, threat from Khazaria was completely gone after Khazarias destruction and conquest by Sviatoslav in the late 10th century, after which Volga Bulgaria grew greatly in size and power. Sometime in the late 9th century unification processes started, and the capital was established at Bolghar city,160 km south from modern Kazan. Most scholars doubt, however, that the state could assert independence from the Khazars until the Khazars were annihilated by Svyatoslav of Rus in 965, abu al-Ghazi Bahadur named the Volga-Bulgar people as Ulak. Volga Bulgaria adopted Islam in 922 -66 years before Russia became Christian, in 921 Almış sent an ambassador to the Caliph requesting religious instruction. Next year an embassy returned with Ibn Fadlan as secretary, a significant number of Muslims already lived in the country. The Bulgarians attempted to convert Vladimir I of Kiev to Islam, however Vladimir rejected the notion of Rus giving up wine, commanding the Volga River in its middle course, the state controlled much of trade between Europe and Asia prior to the Crusades. The capital, Bolghar, was a city, rivalling in size. Trade partners of Bolghar included from Vikings, Bjarmland, Yugra and Nenets in the north to Baghdad and Constantinople in the south, other major cities included Bilär, Suar, Qaşan and Cükätaw. Modern cities Kazan and Yelabuga were founded as Volga Bulgarias border fortresses, some of the Volga Bulgarian cities still have not been found, but they are mentioned in old East Slavic sources. They are, Ashli, Tuxçin, İbrahim, Taw İle, some of them were ruined during and after the Golden Horde invasion. The Rus principalities to the west posed the only military threat. In the 11th century, the country was devastated by raids by other Rus. Then, at the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries, under Russian pressure from the west, the Bulgars had to move their capital from Bolghar to Bilär. In September 1223 near Samara an advance guard of Genghis Khans army under command of Uran, son of Subutai Bahadur, in 1236, the Mongols returned and in five years had subjugated the whole country, which at that time was suffering from internal war
Volga Bulgaria
–
Detailed map of Volga Bulgaria.
Volga Bulgaria
–
Flag
Volga Bulgaria
–
Volga Bulgaria in the Eurasian world of AD 1200
Volga Bulgaria
–
Devil's Tower in
Yelabuga, 12th century.
22.
Cumania
–
The name Cumania originated as the Latin exonym for the Cuman-Kipchak confederation, which was a Turkic confederation in the western part of the Eurasian Steppe, between the 10th and 13th centuries. The confederation was dominated by two Turkic nomadic tribes, the Cumans and the Kipchaks, Cumania was known in Islamic sources as Desht-i Qipchaq, which means Steppe of the Kipchaks, or foreign land sheltering the Kipchaks, in the Turkic languages. Russian sources have referred to Cumania as the Polovtsian Steppe, or the Polovcian Plain, the Golden Horde was also referred to as Comania by Armenian chronicler Hethum of Korykos. Hethum of Korykos described Cumania as wholly flat and with no trees, ibn Batutta said of Cumania, This wilderness is green and grassy with no trees, nor hills, high or low. there is no means of travelling in this desert except in wagons. Battutas contemporary, Hamdallah Mustawfi, eloborated, This is of the Sixth Clime, its plains bear excellent pasturage. the climate is cold, and their water comes from springs and wells. Considering the nomadic way of life of peoples, these frontiers can be regarded only as approximate. As in the case of other large nomadic Eurasian confederacies. While the main component was probably the Turkic-speaking tribes, the confederacy included other ethnic components as well, Cumania was primarily a political name, referring to the leading, integrating tribe or clan of the confederacy or state. The Cumans, when they first appear in sources, are members of a confederacy irrespective of their tribal origin. Former tribal names disappeared when the tribe in question became part of a political unit, for instance, when we hear of an incursion of Cumans, it means that certain tribes of the Cuman confederacy took part in a military enterprise. In his History of the Mongols, the Persian historian Rashid-al-Din Hamadani, referred to Cumania around 1236-1237, during the Mongol invasion of Möngke, among others, he mentions the Kipchaks, the Turkophone Asi and the Karaulaghi. The vast territory of this Cuman-Kipchak realm, consisting of loosely connected tribal units who were the dominating force, was never politically united by a strong central power. This pontic Cumania, ended its existence in the middle of the 13th century, on the Great Hungarian Plain, Cuman settlers gave their name to two regions known as Kunság, the Hungarian word for Cumania, Greater Cumania and Little Cumania, located the Great Hungarian Plain. Here, the Cumans maintained their language and some ethnic customs well into the modern era, at Milcov, years earlier, in 1227, the Cuman warlord Bortz accepted Catholic Christianity from missionary Dominican monks. Pope Gregory IX heard about the conversion of the Cumans. Teodoric, the bishop of this new diocese, became the guardian of the Dominican Order in the Kingdom of Hungary. At that time, the use of the name Cumania should not to be understood as asserting the existence of a Cuman state, nor even a land inhabited by Cuman tribes but rather to the Diocese of Cumania. From the military point of view, the land comprising the Diocese of Cumania was held either by the Teutonic Order, or by the Vlachs
Cumania
–
History of the Turkic peoples Pre-14th century
Cumania
–
Coat of arms
Cumania
–
Cuman/Kipchak statue, 12th century,
Luhansk
Cumania
–
Hungarian King
Ladislaus I of Hungary (left) fighting with a Cuman Warrior (right)
23.
Caucasus
–
The Caucasus /ˈkɔːkəsəs/ or Caucasia /kɔːˈkeɪʒə/ is a region at the border of Europe and Asia, situated between the Black and the Caspian seas. It is home to the Caucasus Mountains, which contain Europes highest mountain, politically, the Caucasus region is separated between northern and southern parts. The southern parts consist of independent sovereign states, and the parts are under the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation. The region is known for its diversity, aside from Indo-European and Turkic languages, the Kartvelian, Northwest Caucasian. Pliny the Elders Natural History derives the name of the Caucasus from Scythian kroy-khasis, German linguist Paul Kretschmer notes that the Latvian word Kruvesis also means ice. According to German philologists Otto Schrader and Alfons A. Nehring, the South Caucasus region and southern Dagestan were the furthest points of Persian expansions, with areas to the north of Caucasus Mountains practically impregnable. The mythological mountain of Qaf, the worlds highest mountain that ancient lore shrouded in mystery, was said to be situated in this region, therefore, the Caucasus might be associated with the legendary mountain. The Ciscaucasus contains the majority of the Greater Caucasus Mountain range. It includes Southwestern Russia and northern parts of Georgia and Azerbaijan, the Transcaucasus is bordered on the north by Russia, on the west by the Black Sea and Turkey, on the east by the Caspian Sea, and on the south by Iran. It includes the Caucasus Mountains and surrounding lowlands, all of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia are in South Caucasus. The main Greater Caucasus range is generally perceived to be the line between Asia and Europe. The highest peak in the Caucasus is Mount Elbrus in the western Ciscaucasus in Russia, the Caucasus is one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse regions on Earth. The nation states that comprise the Caucasus today are the post-Soviet states Georgia, Armenia, three territories in the region claim independence but are recognized as such by only a handful or by no independent states, Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Abkhazia and South Ossetia are recognised by the majority of independent states as part of Georgia, the Russian divisions include Krasnodar Krai, Stavropol Krai, and the autonomous republics of Adygea, Karachay–Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia, Ingushetia, Chechnya, and Dagestan. The region has many different languages and language families, there are more than 50 ethnic groups living in the region. Russian is used as a common language, today the peoples of the Northern and Southern Caucasus tend to be either Eastern Orthodox Christians, Oriental Orthodox Christians, or Sunni Muslims. Shia Islam has had many adherents historically in Azerbaijan, located in the part of the region. Located on the peripheries of Turkey, Iran, and Russia, the region has been an arena for political, military, religious, throughout its history, the Caucasus was usually incorporated into the Iranian world
Caucasus
–
Caucasus from the sea by
Ivan Aivazovsky, 1899
Caucasus
–
Caucasus mountain range
Caucasus
–
View of the Caucasus Mountains in
Dagestan, Russia
Caucasus
–
Petroglyphs in
Gobustan,
Azerbaijan, dating back to 10,000 BC indicating a thriving culture. It is a
UNESCO World Heritage Site.
24.
Great Khan
–
Khagan or Qagan is a title in the Mongolian language equal to the status of emperor and used to refer to someone who rules a khaganate or empire. The title was adopted by Ögedei Khan from the Turkic title kaɣan and it may also be translated as Khan of Khans, equivalent to King of Kings. In modern Mongolian, the title became Khaan with the g sound becoming almost silent or non-existent, since the division of the Mongol Empire, emperors of the Yuan dynasty held the title of Khagan and their successors in Mongolia continued to have the title. Kağan and Kaan are common Turkish names in Turkey, the common western rendering as Great Khan, notably in the case of the Mongol Empire, is translation of Yekhe Khagan. In the speech one of the Murongs general named Yinalou addressed him as kehan, the Rouran Khaganate was the first people to use the titles Khagan and Khan for their emperors, replacing the Chanyu of the Xiongnu, whom Grousset and others assume to be Turkic. However, many believe the Rouran were proto-Mongols. The Avar Khaganate, who may have included Rouran elements after the Göktürks crushed the Rouran ruling Mongolia, the Avars invaded Europe, and for over a century ruled the Carpathian region. Westerners Latinized the title Khagan into Gaganus or Cagan, Khagan or Khaan refers to Emperor or King in the Mongolian language, however, Yekhe Khagan means Great Khagan or Grand Emperor. Thus, the Yuan is sometimes referred to as the Empire of the Great Khan, coexisting with the independent Mongol khanates in the west, including the Chagatai Khanate, only the Ilkhanate truly recognized the Yuans overlordship as allies. Later Yuan emperors made peace with the three khanates of the Mongol Empire and were considered as their nominal suzerain. The nominal supremacy, while based on nothing like the foundations as that of the earlier Khagans, did last for a few decades. After the breakdown of Mongol Empire and the fall of the Yuan dynasty in the mid-14th century, dayan Khan once revived Emperors authority and recovered its reputation in Mongolia, but with the distribution of his empire among his sons and relatives as fiefs it again caused decentralized rule. The last Khagan of the Chahars, Ligdan Khan, died in 1634 while fighting the Qing dynasty founded by the Manchu people, in contemporary Mongolian language the word Khaan and Khan have different meanings, while English language usually does not differentiate between them. The title is used as a generic term for a king or emperor. Minor rulers were rather relegated to the title of khan. Khagan is the title of Safavid and Qajar shahs of Iran. For example, Agha Muhammad Khan Qajar, Fath Ali Shah, the nickname of Shah Ismail and other Safavid shahs is Kagan-i Suleyman shan. Emperor Taizong of Tang was crowned Tian Kehan, or heavenly Khagan after defeating the Tujue, a later letter sent by the Tang court to the Yenisei Kirghiz Qaghan explained that the peoples of the northwest had requested Tang Taizong to become the Heavenly Qaghan
Great Khan
–
8 of 15 Khagans of the
Mongol Empire.
25.
Orda Khan
–
Orda Ichen was a Mongol Khan and military strategist who ruled eastern part of the Golden Horde during the 13th century. Orda Ichen is credited for founding the White Horde, he was the eldest son of Jochi and this mainly consisted of the territories between Lake Balkhash and the Volga river, it was in these lands that Orda eventually founded the White Horde. West of the Volga river were the lands of his younger brother Batu, who became the first ruler of the Blue Horde, güyük Khan ordered Temuge Otchigin, who tried to illegally usurp the throne for himself, to be investigated by Orda and Möngke in c. This event triggered hostilities between the Mergit and Khiyad tribes, Temüjin was born from the marriage between Hoelun and Yesugei. When Temüjin became 16 years old he married Börte Ujin from the Onggirat tribe, Temüjin formed an alliance with his blood brother Jamuha and his foster-father Toghril, the Mergids were defeated by the alliance which Temüjin had formed and his wife Börte was reclaimed. As Genghis Khan’s first-born son, Jochi was favored as rightful heir to the Mongol Empire and it was Chagatai who brought up the dispute of Jochi’s illegitimacy, but Genghis Khan remained determined that Jochi was his legitimate first-born son. Jochi’s descendants were the oldest branch of the Genghis Khan family, Orda Ichen was the first-born son of Jochi, his younger brothers were Batu, Berke, Shayban, Sinkur, Toga-Timur and Baul-Teval. All these were brothers of each other and Orda Khan was the oldest and his younger brother, Batu Khan, claimed his authority over the Jochid Hordes in accordance with Ordas wish. Subutai & Batu Khan led two armies against Hungary, while Orda Khan with Chagatais sons Baidar & Kadan attacked Poland as a diversion to prevent the Poles and Czechs from assisting Hungary in combat. Orda’s forces assaulted the border of Lithuania, then sacked the cities of Sandomierz and Kraków in April 1241, but were unable to conquer Wrocław. While Orda was preparing siege on Wrocław, Baidar and Kadan received glowing reports that king Wenceslaus I of Bohemia was two days away with an army of 50,000 soldiers, a smoke screen was used to conceal the Mangudai’s withdrawal, thereby misleading Henry’s military forces. After the European knights pursued the fleeing Mangudai, the Mongols were able to separate the knights from the infantry, henry II the Pious was intercepted while trying to escape the battlefield, his head was paraded on a spear while marching through the town of Legnica. King Wenceslaus I of Bohemia arrived at the field too late. When he heard that one Mongol group raided as far as the Saxonian town Meissen promptly marched there and seek reinforcements from Thuringia, meanwhile, rapid Mongol troops returned to the East and tried attack Bohemia via Kłodzko Land but they were stopped at the border. Afterwards Orda with Mangudai joined forces of Kadan and Baidar at Otmuchów, Orda Khan died in 1251 before he could consolidate his ülüs. After his death his grandson Köchü extended the line of successors for the White Horde, very little is known about Orda’s wife and children, however his dynastic lines lived on for many generations. His early successors were friendly towards Ilkhanate and Yuan emperors, Urus the eighth Khan of the White Horde was a direct descendant of Orda khan, Urus Khan became the leader of both the Blue and White Horde. Tokhtamysh was one of Ordas descendants, he dethroned the Batukhanids, List of Mongol Khans List of Khans of the Golden Horde
Orda Khan
–
Mongolian
Horse Archers
26.
Volga
–
VoLGA is an acronym for Voice over LTE via Generic Access. The VoLGA Forums mission is to promote the adoption of VoLGA technology. The forum members include Alcatel-Lucent, Deutsche Telekom, Huawei, HTC Corporation, LG Electronics, Motorola, Nortel, Sonus Networks, Samsung, Starent Networks, swedish telecom equipment vendor Ericsson was originally a member of the VoLGA Forum, but revoked their membership in December 2009. The group has developed and published a set of open specifications and these can be used by vendors and operators of wireless communications systems and applications to develop and deploy interoperable solutions. In December 2009, Deutsche Telekom announced it had completed the worlds first voice call over LTE, official website Voice over LTE blog
Volga
–
References [edit]
27.
Lake Balkhash
–
Lake Balkhash is one of the largest lakes in Asia and 15th largest in the world. It is located in Central Asia in southeastern Kazakhstan and belongs to an endorheic basin shared by Kazakhstan and China, the Ili is fed by precipitation, largely vernal snowmelt, from the mountains of Chinas Xinjiang region. The lake currently covers an area of about 16,400 km2, however, like the Aral Sea, it is shrinking as a result of the diversion of water from rivers that feed it. The lake is divided by a strait into two distinct parts, the western part is fresh water, while the eastern half is saline. The eastern part is on average 1.7 times deeper than the western section, the largest city near the lake is also named Balkhash and has about 66,000 inhabitants. Major industrial activities in the area include mining, ore processing and fishing, while the size of the lake is temporarily growing, there is concern about the lakes shallowing due to desertification and industrial activity. The present name of the lake originates from the word balkas of Tatar, Kazakh, from as early as 103 BC up until the 8th century, the Balkhash polity was known to the Chinese as 布谷/布库/布苏 Pu-Ku/Bu-Ku. From the 8th century on, the land to the south of the lake and it was a land where the nomadic Turks and Mongols of the steppe mingled cultures with the settled peoples of Central Asia. During Chinas Qing dynasty, the formed the northwestern-most boundary of the Empire. In 1864, the lake and its area were ceded to Imperial Russia under the Protocol of Chuguchak. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the became part of Kazakhstan. Rapid erosion of the Tian Shan has meant the depression filled with sand river sediments in what is geologically a very short time span. The basin is a part of Dzungarian Alatau, which also contains lakes Sasykkol, Alakol and these lakes are remnants of an ancient sea which once covered the entire Balkhash-Alakol depression, but was not connected with the Aral–Caspian Depression. The lake has an area of about 16,400 km2 and it is elevated about 340 m above sea level and has a sickle shape. Its length is about 600 km and the width varies from 9–19 km in the part to 74 km in the western part. Saryesik Peninsula, located near the middle of the lake, hydrographically divides it into two different parts. The western part, which comprises 58% of the lake area and 46% of its volume, is relatively shallow, quiet and is filled with freshwater. These parts are connected by the Strait Uzynaral which is 3.5 km wide, the lake includes several small basins
Lake Balkhash
–
View from Space, April 1991
Lake Balkhash
–
Satellite image of the
Karatal River delta
Lake Balkhash
–
Saryesik peninsula, separating the lake into two parts, and the Strait Uzynaral
Lake Balkhash
–
Ice over Lake Balkhash on April 11, 2003.
28.
Ural River
–
The Ural or Jayıq/Zhayyq, known as Yaik before 1775, is a river flowing through Russia and Kazakhstan in Eurasia. It originates in the southern Ural Mountains and ends at the Caspian Sea, at 2,428 kilometres, it is the third-longest river in Europe after the Volga and the Danube, and the 18th-longest river in Asia. The Ural River is conventionally considered part of the boundary between the continents of Europe and Asia, the river begins at the slopes of the Kruglaya Mountain of the Uraltau mountain ridge in South Ural, on the territory of the Uchalinsky District of Bashkortostan. There it has a width of 60 to 80 metres. It then falls into the Yaik Swamp and after exiting it widens up to 5 kilometres, below Verkhneuralsk, its flow is characteristic of a flatland river, there it enters Chelyabinsk and Orenburg Oblasts. From Magnitogorsk to Orsk its banks are steep and rocky and the bottom has many rifts, after Orsk, the river abruptly turns west and flows through a 45-kilometre long canyon in the Guberlinsk Mountains. After Uralsk, it flows north to south, through the territory of West Kazakhstan Province. There, the river widens and has lakes and ducts. Near the mouth, it splits into the Yaik and Zolotoy distributaries, the Yaik distributary is shallow, with almost no trees on the shores, and is rich in fish, whereas Zolotoy is deeper and is navigable. Ural River has a spectacular tree-like shape of the delta and this type of delta forms naturally in the slow rivers which deliver a great deal of sediments and flow into a quiet sea. In the delta,13.5 kilometres from the mouth of the Zolotoy distributary lies Shalyga Island, which is 2.5 kilometres long, with heights of 1 to 2 metres and maximum widths of 0.3 kilometres. The tributaries, in order going upstream, are Kushum, Derkul, Chagan, Irtek, Utva, Ilek, Bolshaya Chobda, Kindel, Sakmara, Salmys, Or, the entire length of the Ural River is considered the Europe-Asia boundary by most authoritative sources. Rarely, the smaller, shorter Emba River is claimed as the continental boundary, the Ural River bridge in Orenburg is even labeled with permanent monuments carved with the word Europe on one side, Asia on the other. During the floods, the river widens to above 10 kilometres near Uralsk, water level is highest in later April upstream and in May downstream. Its fluctuation is 3 to 4 metres in the stream,9 to 10 metres in the middle of the river. The average water discharge is 104 cubic metres per second near Orenburg, and 400 cubic metres per second at the Kushum village, the maximum discharge is 14,000 cubic metres per second and the minimum is 1.62 cubic metres per second. Average turbidity is 280 grams per cubic metre at Orenburg and 290 grams per cubic metre near Kushum, the river freezes at the source in early November and in the middle and lower reaches in late November. It opens in the lower reaches in late March and in early April in the upper reaches, the ice drift is relatively short
Ural River
–
The Ural River from a plane between
Uralsk and
Atyrau,
Kazakhstan
Ural River
–
The bridge across the Urals in the
Uchalinsky District (
Bashkortostan)
Ural River
–
The "bird's-foot" ("digitate") delta of the Ural in the Caspian Sea
Ural River
–
Eurasian Spoonbill
29.
Abulghazi Bahadur
–
Abu al-Ghazi Bahadur was a khan of the Khanate of Khiva from 1643 to 1663. He spent ten years in Persia before becoming khan, and was well educated. He was born in Urgench, Khanate of Khiva, the son of ruler Arab Muhammad Khan and he fled to the Safavid court in Isfahan after a power struggle arose among him and his brothers. He lived there in exile from 1629 until 1639 studying Persian, in 1644 or 1645 he acceded to the throne, a position he would hold for twenty years. He died in Khiva in 1663, Abu al-Ghazi is known as the author of two historical works, Genealogy of the Turkmen Shajare-i Tarakime finished in 1661 and Genealogy of the Turks Shajare-i Türk finished in 1665. These are important sources for knowledge of Central Asian history. In the 19th and 20th centuries were published numerous critical translations of the Shajare-i Türk, the first critical translation, performed by professional scholars, was published in Kazan in 1825. The Turkish translation of the published in Kazan was done by philologist Vefik Ahmed Pasha. The most influential Western publication was Historie des Mogols et des Tatares par Aboul-Ghazi Behadour Khan, publiee, traduite et annotee par le baron Desmaisons and that observation, confirmed by other scholars, associated in the scientific literature the name of Maodun with the epic personality of the Oguz-Kagan. The literary significance of Shajare-i Türk is that Abu al-Ghazi openly spoke against Chaghatay literary language because it carried a strong Persian influence, Abu al-Ghazi language is easy, simple folk language of the Khiva Uzbeks and is quite different from the Chaghatay literary language. The style of Abu al-Ghazi, despite a scientific nature of his compositions, is distinguished by clarity and richness of vocabulary, and is interspersed with the falk Uzbek expressions and proverbs. Abu al-Ghazi son Abu al-Muzaffar Anusha Muhammad Bahadur reassigned to complete the work of his father Shajare-i Türk to a certain Mahmud bin Mulla Muhammad Zaman Urgench, it was finalized in 1665
Abulghazi Bahadur
–
Abu al-Ghazi Bahadur
30.
Mongol-Jin dynasty war
–
The Mongol conquest of the Jin dynasty, also known as the Mongol–Jin War, was fought between the Mongol Empire and the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty in Manchuria and north China. The war, which started in 1211, lasted over 23 years, the Jurchen rulers of the Jin dynasty collected tribute from some of the nomadic tribes living on the Mongol steppes and encouraged rivalries among them. When the Mongols were unified under Khabul in the 12th century, the Jurchens encouraged the Tatars to destroy them, the Tatars eventually captured Khabuls successor, Ambaghai, and handed him over to the Jin imperial court. Emperor Xizong of the Jin dynasty ordered had Ambaghai executed by crucifixion, the Jin dynasty also conducted regular punitive expeditions against the Mongol nomads, either enslaving or killing them. In 1210, a delegation arrived at the court of Genghis Khan to proclaim the ascension of Wanyan Yongji to the Jin throne, because the Jurchens defeated the powerful steppe nomads and allied with the Keraites and the Tatars, they claimed sovereignty over all the tribes of the steppe. High court officials in the Jin government defected to the Mongols, but fearful of a trap or some other nefarious scheme, Genghis Khan refused. His defiance of the Jin envoys was tantamount to a declaration of war between the Mongols and Jurchens, after Genghis Khan returned to the Kherlen River, in the spring of 1211, he summoned a kurultai. By organising a long discussion, everyone in the community was included in the process, the Khan prayed privately on a nearby mountain. He removed his hat and belt, bowed down before the Eternal Sky and he explained that he had not sought this war against the Jurchens. At the dawn on the day, Genghis Khan emerged with the verdict, The Eternal Blue Sky has promised us victory. Wanyan Yongji, angry on hearing how Genghis Khan behaved, sent the message to the Khan that Our Empire is like the sea, yours is, when the conquest of the Tangut-led Western Xia empire started, there were multiple raids between 1207-1209. When the Mongols invaded Jin territory in 1211, Ala Qush, the first important battle between the Mongol Empire and the Jin dynasty was the Battle of Yehuling at a mountain pass in Zhangjiakou which took place in 1211. There, Wanyan Jiujin, the Jin field commander, made a mistake in not attacking the Mongols at the first opportunity. Instead, he sent a messenger to the Mongol side, Shimo Mingan, at this engagement, fought at Yehuling, the Mongols massacred thousands of Jin troops. The Mongols learnt at an age to always fight on the move. They would pass through towns to draw their opponent away from their animals, when they fell for the Mongol armys trap, the Mongols would kill them and take their animals. While Genghis Khan headed southward, his general Jebe travelled even further east into Manchuria, however, Genghis Khan was wounded by an arrow in his knee in 1212 after the Mongols returned from their relaxation in the borderlands between grass and the Gobi Desert. The Khitan leader Liu-ke had declared his allegiance to Genghis in 1212, the Mongols smashed the Jin armies, each numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and broke through Juyong Pass and Zijing Gap by November 1213
Mongol-Jin dynasty war
–
One of major battles at the Badger Mouth during the Mongol–Jin War.
Mongol-Jin dynasty war
–
Mongol cavalry battle Jin warriors
Mongol-Jin dynasty war
–
Ögedei (r.1229-41), the son of
Genghis Khan and the
Great Khan of the Mongols
31.
North China
–
Northern China or North China is a geographical region of China. The heartland of North China is the North China Plain, or the Yellow River Plain, North China is usually restricted to the northern part of China proper (inner China and excludes Xinjiang and often Manchuria and the Northeast China. The vast region in China from the Yellow River Valley south to the Yangtze River was the centre of Chinese empires, in prehistory and early history, the plain is considered the origin of Chinese civilization in official Chinese history. The region cultivated wheat, and most speak Northern Chinese, which includes Beijing dialect, which is largely the basis of Standard Chinese, jin Chinese and Mongolian are also widely spoken. The region remains the political, military, and cultural center of the PRC, in prehistory, the region was home to the Yangshao and Longshan cultures. Peking man was found near modern-day Beijing, North China Plain Northeast China East China Northern and southern China
North China
–
Northern
People's Republic of China region.
32.
Bashkirs
–
The Bashkirs are a Turkic people indigenous to Bashkortostan, extending on both sides of the Ural Mountains, in the area where Eastern Europe meets North Asia. Most Bashkirs speak the Bashkir language, which belongs to the Kypchak branch of the Turkic languages, in religion the Bashkirs are mainly Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi madhhab. On the most popular and early hypothesis widespread in the Bashkir legends and according to the theory of 18th-century ethnographers V. N. Tatishchev, richkov, and Johann Gottlieb Georgi, the word Bashqort means main wolf, wolf leader. Also there are theories regarding the etymology of the name Bashqort. In 1847, historian V. S. Yumatov suggested the meaning as beekeeper, beemaster, in 1885, another Russian historian and ethnologist, A. E. Alektorov, suggested that Bashqort means distinct nation. Ethnologist R. G. Kuzeev defines the ethnonym as bash — main, head and qort — clan, according to Douglas Morton Dunlop the ethnonym Bashqort comes from beshgur, bashgur which means five tribes. Since SH in the modern language complies with L in Bulgar, the anthropologist and the ethnologist R. M. Other option of etymology of an ethnonym bashqort according to R. M. Yusupov is connected also with the Iranian phrase Bachagurd, and is translated as the descendant, in this case the bacha is translated just as the child, the descendant, and gurd — the hero. After an era of Huns the ethnonym could change to a current state as follows, the Bashkirs are also mentioned in Ashkharatsuyts. Starting in the 9th century, the first written information about Bashkirs appears from Arab, the first message of Arab written sources on Bashkirs belongs to the traveler Sallam an at-Tardzhuman. About 840 he visited the country the Bashkir and specified its approximate borders, abu Zayd al-Balkhi described Bashkirs as a people divided into two groups, one inhabiting the Southern Urals, the second group living on the Danube plain near the boundaries of Byzantium. The first ethnographic description the Bashkir is provided at Ahmad ibn Fadlan — the ambassador of the Baghdad Caliph Al-Muqtadir to the governor of Volga Bulgaria and he visited among the Bashkirs in 922. The Bashkirs, according to Ibn Fadlan, were a warlike and powerful and they were engaged in cattle breeding. Apparently, Islam had begun spreading among the Bashkirs as one of the members of the embassy was a Bashkir of the Muslim religion. According to the testimony of Ibn Fadlan, the Bashkirs are Turks, live on the slopes of the Urals. Their neighbours in the southeast were Pechenegs, in the west Bulgars, the first European sources to mention the Bashkirs are the works of Joannes de Plano Carpini and William of Rubruquis. By 1236, lands of Bashkortostan were incorporated into the empire of Genghis Khan, during the 13th and 14th centuries, all of Bashkortostan was part of the Golden Horde. The brother of Batu-Khan, Sheibani, received the Bashkir lands to the east of the Ural Mountains, after the breakup of the Mongol Empire, the Bashkirs were divided among the Nogai Horde, the Khanate of Kazan and the Khanate of Sibir, founded in the 15th century
Bashkirs
–
Murtaza Rakhimov Zeki Velidi Togan Babich Shaikhzada Zaynulla Rasulev Zagir Ismagilov Ravil Bikbaev Shagit Khudayberdin Galimyan Tagan
Irek Zaripov
Bashkirs
–
Map of Europe, 600 AD
Bashkirs
–
Mausoleum of Huseynbek, first Islamic religious leader of Historical Bashkortostan. 14th-century building
Bashkirs
–
Bashkir women dressed in dulbega breast cover and kashmau headdress. 1770–1771.
33.
Cumans
–
The Cumans were a Turkic nomadic people comprising the western branch of the Cuman-Kipchak confederation. After the Mongol invasion, many sought asylum in Hungary, as many Cumans had settled in Hungary, Bulgaria, the Cumans were fierce and formidable nomadic warriors of the Eurasian steppe who exerted an enduring impact on the medieval Balkans. They were numerous, culturally sophisticated and militarily powerful, the Cumans also had a pre-eminent role in the Fourth Crusade and in the creation of the Second Bulgarian Empire. Cuman and Kipchak tribes joined politically to create the Cuman-Kipchak confederation, the Cuman language is attested in some medieval documents and is the best-known of the early Turkic languages. The Codex Cumanicus was a manual that was written to help Catholic missionaries communicate with the Cuman people. The basic instrument of Cuman political success was military force, which dominated each of the warring Balkan factions. It is also unclear whether a particular name refers to the Cumans alone. However, in Turkic languages qu, qun, qūn, quman or qoman means pale, sallow, cream coloured, pale yellow, in East Slavic languages and Polish, they are known as the Polovtsy, derived from the Slavic root *polvъ pale, light yellow, blonde. Polovtsy or Polovec is often said to be derived from the Old East Slavic polovŭ yellow, the old Ukrainian word polovtsy, derived from polovo straw – means blond, pale yellow. The western Cumans, or Polovtsy, were also called Sorochinetses by the Rus, a similar etymology may have been at work in the name of the Sary people, who also migrated westward ahead of the Qun. An alternative etymology of Polovtsy is also possible, the Slavic root *pȍlje field, in Germanic languages, the Cumans were called Folban, Vallani or Valwe – all derivations of old Germanic words for pale. In the German account by Adam of Bremen, and in Matthaios of Edessa, the Hungarian term for the Cumans is Kun, which in Old Hungarian meant nomad, but was later applied solely to the Cumans. This confederation and their living together may have made it difficult for historians to write exclusively about either nation, the latter seven clans eventually settled in Hungary. The ethnic origins of the Cumanians are uncertain, Robert Wolff states that it is conjectured that ethnically the Cumans may not originally have been Turkic. The Greek philosopher Strabo refers to the Darial Gorge as Porta Caucasica, the writings of al Marwazi state that the Qun people came from the northern Chinese borders – the land of Qitay. After leaving the lands of the Khitans, they entered the territory of the Shari/Sari people, Marwazi wrote that the Qun were Nestorian Christians. It cannot be established whether the Cumans conquered the Kipchaks or whether they represent the western mass of largely Kipchak-Turkic speaking tribes. A victim of the Cuman migration to the west was the Kimek Khanate, due to this, Kimek tribal elements were represented amongst the Cuman-Kipchaks
Cumans
–
Asia, circa 1200
Cumans
Cumans
–
The field of
Igor Svyatoslavich 's battle with the
Cuman –
Kipchaks, by
Viktor Vasnetsov
Cumans
–
Hungarian King
Ladislaus I of Hungary (left) fighting a Cuman warrior (right), from the Székelyderzs (Dârjiu) Unitarian Church, Romania.
34.
Bulghars
–
The Bulgars were semi-nomadic warrior Turkic tribes who flourished in the Pontic-Caspian steppe and the Volga region during the 7th century. Emerging as nomadic equestrians in the Volga-Ural region, according to some researchers their roots can be traced to Central Asia, during their westward migration across the Eurasian steppe the Bulgars absorbed other ethnic groups and cultural influences, including Hunnic, Iranian and Indo-European people. Modern genetic research on Central Asian Turkic people and ethnic groups related to the Bulgars points to an affiliation with western Eurasian and European populations, the Bulgars spoke a Turkic language, i. e. Bulgar language of Oghuric branch. They preserved military titles, organization and customs of Eurasian steppes, as well as pagan shamanism, the Bulgars became semi-sedentary during the 7th century in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, establishing the polity of Old Great Bulgaria c. 635, which was absorbed by the Khazar Empire in 668 AD,679, Khan Asparukh conquered Scythia Minor, opening access to Moesia, and established the First Bulgarian Empire. In the Balkans, the Bulgars became a political and military elite, and merged with previous populations, such as the Thracians and Vlachs, and were Slavicized, thus forming modern Bulgarians. The remaining Pontic Bulgars migrated in the 7th century to the Volga River, the Volga Tatars and Chuvash people claim to be originated from the Volga Bulgars. The etymology of the ethnonym Bulgar is not completely understood and difficult to trace back earlier than the 4th century AD. Since the work of Wilhelm Tomaschek, it is said to be derived from the Common Turkic bulğha, bulga- or bulya. Other scholars have added that bulğha might also imply stir, disturb, confuse. Peter A. Boodberg noted that the Buluoji in the Chinese sources were recorded as remnants of the Xiongnu confederation, and had strong Caucasian elements. Another theory linking the Bulgars to a Turkic people of Inner Asia has been put forward by Boris Simeonov, who identified them with the Pugu, a Tiele and/or Toquz Oguz tribe. The Pugu were mentioned in Chinese sources from 103 BC up to the 8th century AD, the names Onoğur and Bulgar were linked by later Byzantine sources for reasons that are unclear. Karatay interpreted gur/gor as country, and noted the Tekin derivation of gur from the Altaic suffix -gir, generally, modern scholars consider the terms oğuz or oğur, as generic terms for Turkic tribal confederations, to be derived from Turkic *og/uq, meaning kinship or being akin to. The terms initially were not the same, as oq/ogsiz meant arrow, while oğul meant offspring, child, son, oğuš/uğuš was tribe, clan, and the verb oğša-/oqša meant to be like, resemble. There also appears to be an association between the Bulgars and the preceding Kutrigur and Utigur – as Oğur tribes, with the ethnonym Bulgar as a spreading adjective. Golden considered the origin of the Kutrigurs and Utigurs to be obscure and he noted, however, an implication that the Kutrigurs and Utigurs were related to the Šarağur, and that according to Procopius these were Hunnish tribal unions, of partly Cimmerian descent. Karatay considered the Kutrigurs and Utigurs to be two related, ancestral people, and prominent tribes in the later Bulgar union, but different from the Bulgars, among many other theories regarding the etymology of Bulgar, the following have also had limited support. An Eastern Germanic root meaning combative, according to D, the origin of the early Bulgars is still unclear
Bulghars
–
Bulgars led by
Khan Krum pursue the Byzantines at the
Battle of Versinikia (813)
Bulghars
–
Bulgars subsequent migrations from
Central Asia and Western Eurasia to the Europe.
Bulghars
–
The
Madara Rider, an example of Bulgar art in Bulgaria, dated to the beginning of the 8th century
Bulghars
–
Partial reconstruction of the
Great Basilica in the first capital of the
Bulgarian Empire –
Pliska
35.
Alans
–
The Alans were an Iranian nomadic pastoral people of antiquity. The name Alan is an Iranian dialectical form of Aryan, a common self-designation of the Indo-Iranians, possibly related to the Massagetae, the Alans have been connected by modern historians with the Central Asian Yancai and Aorsi of Chinese and Roman sources, respectively. Having migrated westwards and become dominant among the Sarmatians on the Pontic Steppe, at the time they had settled the region north of the Black Sea, and frequently raided the Parthian Empire and the Caucasian provinces of the Roman Empire. In 215–250 AD their power on the Pontic Steppe was broken by the Goths, upon the Hunnic defeat of the Goths on the Pontic Steppe around 375 AD, many of the Alans migrated westwards along with various Germanic tribes. They crossed the Rhine in 406 AD along with the Vandals and Suebi, settling in Orléans, around 409 AD they joined the Vandals and Suebi in the crossing of the Pyrenees into the Iberian Peninsula, settling in Lusitania and Carthaginiensis. The Iberian Alans were soundly defeated by the Visigoths 418 AD, the Alans who remained under Hunnic rule founded a powerful kingdom in the North Caucasus in the Middle Ages, which ended with the Mongol invasions in the 13th century AD. These Alans are said to be the ancestors of the modern Ossetians, the Alans spoke an Eastern Iranian language which derived from Scytho-Sarmatian and which in turn evolved into modern Ossetian. The various forms of Alan – Greek, Ἀλανοί Alanoi, Chinese, 阿蘭聊 Alanliao in the 2nd century, 阿蘭 Alan in the 3rd century – and Iron and later Alanguo are derived from Iranian dialectal forms of Aryan. These and other variants of Aryan were common self-designations of the Indo-Iranians, scarcer spellings include Alauni or Halani. The Alans were also known over the course of their history by another group of related names including the variations Asi, As and it is this name that is the root of the modern Ossetian. The first mentions of names that historians link with the Alani appear at almost the time in texts from the Mediterranean, Middle East. In the 1st century AD, the Alans migrated westwards from Central Asia, the Alans are mentioned in the Vologeses inscription which reads that Vologeses I, the Parthian king c. 51–78 AD, in the 11th year of his reign, battled Kuluk, the contemporary Jewish historian, Josephus supplements this inscription. Now there was a nation of the Alans, which we have formerly mentioned somewhere as being Scythians and these Alans therefore plundered the country without opposition, and with great ease, and proceeded as far as Armenia, laying waste all before them. The fact that the Alans invaded Parthia through Hyrcania shows that at the time many Alans were still based north-east of the Caspian Sea, by the early 2nd century AD the Alans were in firm control of the Lower Volga and Kuban. These lands had earlier occupied by the Aorsi and the Siraces. It is likely that the Alans influence stretched further westwards, encompassing most of the Sarmatian world, in 135 AD, the Alans made a huge raid into Asia Minor via the Caucasus, ravaging Media and Armenia. They were eventually driven back by Arrian, the governor of Cappadocia, in 215–250 AD, the Germanic Goths expanded south-eastwards and broke the Alan dominance on the Pontic Steppe
Alans
–
The migrations of the Alans during the 4th–5th centuries AD, from their homeland in the
North Caucasus. Major settlement areas are shown in yellow, Alan civilian emigration in red, and military campaigns in orange.
Alans
–
Europe, AD 117-138. The Alani at the time were concentrated north of the
Caucasus Mountains (centre right).
36.
Jurchens
–
The Jurchen established the Jin Dynasty, whose empire conquered the Northern Song in 1127, gaining control of most of North China. Jin control over China lasted until their 1234 conquest by the Mongols, the Manchus would later conquer the Ming and establish the Qing Dynasty, which ruled China until their overthrow in 1911. The obscurity of the origin of the Jurchen is reflected in the confusion surrounding their name and it is recorded variously in different languages and different eras. The apparently cognate ethnonyms Sushen and Jizhen are recorded in ancient Chinese geographical works like the Classic of Mountains and Seas, the present name dates back to at least the 10th century, when Balhae was destroyed by the Khitans. It was the source of Fra Mauros Zorça and Marco Polos Ciorcia, vajda considers that the Jurchens name probably derives from the Tungusic words for reindeer people and is cognate with the names of the Orochs of Khabarovsk Province and the Oroks of Sakhalin. In Manchu, this word was often used to describe the serfs—though not slaves—of the free Manchu people. To describe the people who founded the Jin dynasty, they reborrowed the Mongolian name as Jurcit. The initial Khitan form of the name was said to be Lüzhen, at the same time, the Jurchen were interchangeably known as the Nrjo-drik. Aisin Gioro, however, argues that this was a folk etymology. Under the Liao, a distinction was made between the Charted Jurchens who submitted to their rule and the Uncharted Jurchens who lived beyond their frontier. The former were divided into the Jianzhou and Haixi Jurchens and the latter included the Yeren Jurchens, in earlier records, this area was known as the home of the Sushen, the Yilou, the Wuji, and the Mohe or Malgal. Under the Qing and within modern scholarship, some sources stress the continuity between these peoples with the Jurchen but this remains conjectural. The Tungusic Mohe tribes were subjects of the Korean state of Balhae, the Mohe enjoyed eating pork, practiced pig farming extensively, and were mainly sedentary. They used both pig and dog skins for coats and they were predominantly farmers and grew soybean, wheat, millet, and rice in addition to hunting. By the 11th century, the Jurchens had become vassals of the Khitan rulers of the Liao dynasty, the Jin dynasty captured the Northern Song dynastys capital, Bianjing, in 1127. The name of the Jurchens dynasty—the Chinese word for gold—derived from the Gold River in their ancestral homeland, at first, the Jurchen tribesmen were kept in readiness for warfare, but decades of urban and settled life in China eroded their original warlike lifestyle in Manchurian tundra and marshes. Eventually, intermarriage with other groups in China was permitted. The Jin rulers themselves came to follow Confucian norms, by 1215, after losing much territory to the Mongols, the Jurchens moved their capital south from Zhongdu to Kaifeng
Jurchens
–
Eurasia before
Genghis Khan 's conquests, 1200
Jurchens
–
China circa 1141, superimposed on modern national borders.
Jurchens
–
Stone tortoise from the grave of a 12th-century Jurchen leader in today's
Ussuriysk
Jurchens
–
A Jurchen man hunting from his horse, from a 15th-century ink and color painting on silk.
37.
Shanxi
–
Shanxi is a province of China, located in the North China region. Its one-character abbreviation is 晋, after the state of Jin that existed here during the Spring, the name Shanxi means West of the Mountains, a reference to the provinces location west of the Taihang Mountains. Shanxi borders Hebei to the east, Henan to the south, Shaanxi to the west, the capital of the province is Taiyuan. In the Spring and Autumn period, the state of Jin was located in what is now Shanxi and it underwent a three-way split into the states of Han, Zhao and Wei in 403 BC, the traditional date taken as the start of the Warring States period. By 221 BC, all of states had fallen to the state of Qin. The Han Dynasty ruled Shanxi as the province of Bingzhou, during the invasion of northern nomads in the Sixteen Kingdoms period, several regimes including the Later Zhao, Former Yan, Former Qin, and Later Yan continuously controlled Shanxi. They were followed by Northern Wei, a Xianbei kingdom, which had one of its earlier capitals at present-day Datong in northern Shanxi, the Tang Dynasty originated in Taiyuan. During the Tang Dynasty and after, present day Shanxi was called Hédōng, empress Wu Zetian, Chinas only female ruler, was born in Shanxi. Shanxi was initially home to the jiedushi of Hedong, Li Cunxu, shi Jingtang, founder of the Later Jin, the third of the Five Dynasties, ceded a piece of northern China to the Khitans in return for military assistance. This territory, called The Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun, included a part of northern Shanxi, the ceded territory became a major problem for Chinas defense against the Khitans for the next 100 years, because it lay south of the Great Wall. He founded his dynasty by launching a coup against the Turkic Later Han Emperor. In the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, the sixteen ceded prefectures continued to be an area of contention between Song China and the Liao Dynasty. Later the Southern Song Dynasty abandoned all of North China, including Shanxi, the Mongol Yuan Dynasty divided China into provinces but did not establish Shanxi as a province. Shanxi only gained its present name and approximate borders during the Ming Dynasty which were of the same landarea, with the collapse of the Qing dynasty, Shanxi became part of the newly established Republic of China. During most of the Republic of Chinas period of rule over mainland China, Yan Xishan devoted himself to modernizing Shanxi and developing its resources during his reign over the province. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Japan occupied much of the province after winning the Battle of Taiyuan, Shanxi was also a major battlefield between the Japanese and the Chinese communist guerrillas of the Eighth Route Army during the war. The soldiers of Shanxi province under Yan Xishan viciously fought against the invading Japanese, right after the defeat of Japan, much of the Shanxi countryside became important bases for the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the ensuing Chinese Civil War. Shanxi was eventually conquered by the communists, resulting in the warlord Yan Xishans retreat to Taiwan Island, for centuries, Shanxi served as the center of trade and banking, the Shanxi merchants were once synonymous with wealth
Shanxi
–
Temple of
Guandi in
Datong.
Shanxi
–
Map showing the location of Shanxi Province
Shanxi
–
Chenghuangshen (City God) Temple of
Pingyao.
Shanxi
–
Western gate of a Temple of Heshen (River God) in
Hequ,
Xinzhou.
38.
Greater Khorasan
–
Khorasan is a historical region lying in the northeast of Persia. Khorasan in its proper sense comprised principally the cities of Balkh and Herat, Mashhad and Nishapur, Merv and Nisa, and Bukhara and Samarkand. Some believe that at certain times Khorasan covered an area, which included parts of Transoxiana, Soghdiana, Sistan. Sources from the 14th to the 16th century report that areas in the south of the Hindu Kush mountain range formed a frontier between Khorasan and Hindustan, in the Islamic period, Persian Iraq and Khorasan were the two important territories. The boundary between these two was the surrounding the cities of Gurgan and Qumis. In particular, the Ghaznavids, Seljuqs, and Timurids divided their empires into Iraqi, the adjective Greater is added these days to distinguish the historical region from the Khorasan Province of Iran, which roughly encompassed the western half of the historical Greater Khorasan. The name Khorāsān is derived from Middle Persian Khwarāsān, a compound of khwar, thus the name Khorasan means land where the sun rises or east. The Persian word Khāvar-zamīn, meaning the land, has also been used as an equivalent term. First established as an entity by the Sassanids, the borders of the region have varied considerably during its 1. Initially the Khorasan province of Sassanid empire included the cities of Nishapur, Herat, Merv, Faryab, Taloqan, Balkh, Bukhara, Badghis, Abiward, Gharjistan, Tus or Susia, Sarakhs and Gurgan. It acquired its greatest extent under the Caliphs, for whom Khorasan was the name of one of the three political zones under their dominion. Under the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates, Khorasan was divided into four sections or quarters, each section based on a single major city, Nishapur, Merv, Herat. In the Middle Ages, the term was applied in Persia to all its territories that lay east and north east of Dasht-e Kavir. Ghobar uses the terms Proper Khorasan and Improper Khorasan in his book to distinguish between the usage of Khorasan in its sense and its usage in a loose sense. Improper Khorasans boundaries extended to as far as Hazarajat and Kabul in the east, Sistan and Baluchistan in the south, Transoxiana and Khwarezm in the north, and Damghan and Gorgan in the west. It is mentioned in the Memoirs of Babur that, The people of Hindustān call every country beyond their own Khorasān, in the manner as the Arabs term all except Arabia. On the road between Hindustān and Khorasān, there are two great marts, the one Kābul, the other Kandahār. Caravans, from Ferghāna, Tūrkestān, Samarkand, Balkh, Bokhāra, Hissār and this country lies between Hindustān and Khorasān
Greater Khorasan
–
Names of territories during the
Caliphate in 750 CE.
Greater Khorasan
–
An accurate map of Persia by
Emanuel Bowen showing the names of territories during the Persian
Safavid dynasty and
Mughal Empire of India (
ca. 1500–1747)
Greater Khorasan
–
An early
turquoise mine in the Madan village of Khorasan during the early 20th century
Greater Khorasan
–
The village of Meyamei in 1909
39.
Persia
–
Iran, also known as Persia, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, is a sovereign state in Western Asia. Comprising a land area of 1,648,195 km2, it is the second-largest country in the Middle East, with 82.8 million inhabitants, Iran is the worlds 17th-most-populous country. It is the country with both a Caspian Sea and an Indian Ocean coastline. The countrys central location in Eurasia and Western Asia, and its proximity to the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran is the countrys capital and largest city, as well as its leading economic and cultural center. Iran is the site of to one of the worlds oldest civilizations, the area was first unified by the Iranian Medes in 625 BC, who became the dominant cultural and political power in the region. The empire collapsed in 330 BC following the conquests of Alexander the Great, under the Sassanid Dynasty, Iran again became one of the leading powers in the world for the next four centuries. Beginning in 633 AD, Arabs conquered Iran and largely displaced the indigenous faiths of Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism by Islam, Iran became a major contributor to the Islamic Golden Age that followed, producing many influential scientists, scholars, artists, and thinkers. During the 18th century, Iran reached its greatest territorial extent since the Sassanid Empire, through the late 18th and 19th centuries, a series of conflicts with Russia led to significant territorial losses and the erosion of sovereignty. Popular unrest culminated in the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1906, which established a monarchy and the countrys first legislative body. Following a coup instigated by the U. K. Growing dissent against foreign influence and political repression led to the 1979 Revolution, Irans rich cultural legacy is reflected in part by its 21 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the third-largest number in Asia and 11th-largest in the world. Iran is a member of the UN, ECO, NAM, OIC. Its political system is based on the 1979 Constitution which combines elements of a democracy with a theocracy governed by Islamic jurists under the concept of a Supreme Leadership. A multicultural country comprising numerous ethnic and linguistic groups, most inhabitants are Shia Muslims, the largest ethnic groups in Iran are the Persians, Azeris, Kurds and Lurs. Historically, Iran has been referred to as Persia by the West, due mainly to the writings of Greek historians who called Iran Persis, meaning land of the Persians. As the most extensive interactions the Ancient Greeks had with any outsider was with the Persians, however, Persis was originally referred to a region settled by Persians in the west shore of Lake Urmia, in the 9th century BC. The settlement was then shifted to the end of the Zagros Mountains. In 1935, Reza Shah requested the international community to refer to the country by its native name, opposition to the name change led to the reversal of the decision, and Professor Ehsan Yarshater, editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, propagated a move to use Persia and Iran interchangeably
Persia
–
Cave painting in Doushe cave,
Lorestan, Iran,
8th millennium BC
Persia
–
Flag
Persia
–
A depiction of the united
Medes and
Persians in
Apadana,
Persepolis
Persia
–
Ruins of the
Gate of All Nations,
Persepolis
40.
Mongol invasions and conquests
–
Mongol invasions and conquests took place throughout the 13th century, resulting in the vast Mongol Empire, which by 1300 covered much of Asia and Eastern Europe. Historians regard the destruction under the Mongol Empire as results of some of the deadliest conflicts in human history. In addition, Mongol expeditions brought the plague along with them, spreading it across much of Asia and Europe. The Mongol Empire developed in the course of the 13th century through a series of conquests and invasions throughout Asia, thus most Mongol conquering and plundering took place during the warmer seasons, when there was sufficient grass for the herds. Tartar and Mongol raids against Russian states continued well beyond the start of the Mongol Empires fragmentation around 1260, elsewhere, the Mongols territorial gains in China continued into the 14th century under the Yuan dynasty, while those in Persia persisted into the 15th century under the Timurid Empire. In India, a Mongol state survived into the 19th century in the form of the Mughal Empire, genghis Khan forged the initial Mongol Empire in Central Asia, starting with the unification of the Mongol and Turkic confederations such as Merkits, Tartars, and Mongols. The Uighur Buddhist Qocho Kingdom surrendered and joined the empire and he then continued expansion of the empire via conquest of the Qara Khitai and the Khwarazmian dynasty. Large areas of Islamic Central Asia and northeastern Iran were seriously depopulated, each soldier was required to execute a certain number of persons, with the number varying according to circumstances. For example, after the conquest of Urgench, each Mongol warrior – in an group that might have consisted of two tumens – was required to execute 24 people. Hungary became a refuge after the Mongol invasions for fleeing Cumans, one thousand northern Chinese engineer squads accompanied the Mongol Khan Hulagu during his conquest of the Middle East. The Yuan dynasty created a Han Army out of defected Jin troops, the Mongol force which invaded southern China was far greater than the force they sent to invade the Middle East in 1256. The Mongols greatest triumph was when Kublai Khan established the Yuan dynasty in China in 1271, the top-level government agency Bureau of Buddhist and Tibetan Affairs was established to govern Tibet, which was conquered by the Mongols and put under Yuan rule. The Mongols also invaded Sakhalin between 1264 and 1308, likewise, Korea became a semi-autonomous vassal state and compulsory ally of the Yuan dynasty for about 80 years. The Yuan dynasty was overthrown during the Red Turban Rebellion in 1368 by the Han Chinese who gained independence. Kublai Khans Yuan dynasty invaded Burma between 1277 and 1287, resulting in the capitulation and disintegration of the Pagan Kingdom, however, the invasion in 1301 was repulsed by the Burmese Myinsaing Kingdom. The Mongol invasions of Vietnam and Java resulted in defeat for the Mongols, the Mongols invaded and destroyed Volga Bulgaria and Kievan Rus, before invading Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria, and others. Over the course of three years, the Mongols destroyed and annihilated all of the cities of Russia with the exceptions of Novgorod. When we were journeying through that land we came across countless skulls, the Mongol invasions induced population displacement on a scale never seen before in central Asia as well as eastern Europe
Mongol invasions and conquests
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Battle of Vâliyân against the
Khwarazmian dynasty.
Mongol invasions and conquests
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Expansion of the Mongol Empire 1206–94
Mongol invasions and conquests
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Siege of Baghdad in 1258.
Mongol invasions and conquests
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Battle of the Badger Mouth against the
Jin dynasty.
41.
First Mongol invasion of Burma
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The first Mongol invasions of Burma were a series of military conflicts between Kublai Khans Yuan dynasty, division of the Mongol Empire, and the Pagan Empire that took place between 1277 and 1287. The invasions toppled the 250-year-old Pagan Empire, and the Mongol army seized Pagan territories in present-day Dehong, Yunnan, the invasions ushered in 250 years of political fragmentation in Burma and the rise of Tai-Shan states throughout mainland Southeast Asia. The Mongols first demanded tribute from Pagan in 1271–72, as part of their drive to encircle the Song dynasty of China, when King Narathihapate refused, Emperor Kublai Khan himself sent another mission in 1273, again demanding tribute. In 1275, the emperor ordered the Yunnan government to secure the borderlands in order to block a path for the Song. Pagan did contest but its army was back at the frontier by the Mongol Army in 1277–78. After a brief lull, Kublai Khan in 1281 turned his attention to Southeast Asia, demanding tribute from Pagan, when the Burmese king again refused, the emperor ordered an invasion of northern Burma. Two dry season campaigns later, the Mongols had occupied down to Tagaung and Hanlin, the Mongols organized northern Burma as the province of Zhengmian. Ceasefire negotiations began in 1285, and ended with Narathihapate finally agreeing to submit in June 1286, but the treaty never really took effect as Narathihapate was assassinated in July 1287, and no authority who could honor the treaty emerged. The Mongol command at Yunnan now deemed the imperial order to withdraw void and they may not have reached Pagan, and even if they did, after having suffered heavy casualties, they returned to Tagaung. The Pagan Empire disintegrated and anarchy ensued, the Mongols, who probably preferred the situation, did nothing to restore order in the next ten years. In March 1297, they accepted the submission of King Kyawswa of Pagan although he controlled little beyond the capital city of Pagan. But Kyawswa was overthrown nine months later, and the Mongols were forced to intervene, Marco Polo reported the first invasions in his travelogue, Il Milione. The Burmese referred to the invaders as the Taruk, today, King Narathihapate is unkindly remembered in Burmese history as Taruk-Pye Min. In the 13th century, the Pagan Empire, along with the Khmer Empire, was one of the two empires in mainland Southeast Asia. For much of its history, Pagans neighbor to the northeast was not China but the independent Dali Kingdom and its predecessor Nanzhao, both with Dali as their capital city. Dali-based kingdoms were a power in their own right, at times allying themselves with the Tibetan Empire to their west and at other times with Chinas Tang and Song dynasties. Indeed, Nanzhaos mounted armies ventured deep into what is today Burma and may have been behind the founding of the city of Pagan. Then as now, the borderlands mostly consist of forbidding terrains of high mountain ranges, the Mongol Empire first arrived at the doorstep of the Pagan Empire in 1252 by invading the Dali Kingdom in its attempt to outflank Song China
First Mongol invasion of Burma
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Dali Kingdom c. mid-12th century
First Mongol invasion of Burma
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Pagan plains today
First Mongol invasion of Burma
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Mongol mounted archer
First Mongol invasion of Burma
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Mongol warrior on horseback, preparing a mounted archery shot.
42.
Mongol conquest of the Qara Khitai
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The Mongol Empire conquered the Qara Khitai in the years 1216–1218 AD. Prior to the invasion, war with the Khwarazmian dynasty and the usurpation of power by the Naiman prince Kuchlug had weakened the Qara Khitai. When Kuchlug besieged Almaliq, a city belonging to the Karluks, vassals of the Mongol Empire, the hunters turned Kuchlug over to the Mongols, who beheaded him. Upon defeating the Qara Khitai, the Mongols now had a border with the Khwarazmian Empire. After Genghis Khan defeated the Naimans in 1204, Naiman prince Kuchlug fled his homeland to take refuge among the Qara Khitai, the Gurkhan Yelü Zhilugu welcomed Kuchlug into his empire, and Kuchlug became an advisor and military commander, eventually marrying one of the daughters of Zhilugu. However, during a war with the bordering Khawarzmian dynasty, Kuchlug initiated a coup détat against Zhilegu, after Kuchlug took power, he allowed Zhilegu to rule the Qara Khitai in name only. When the Gurkhan died in 1213, Kuchlug took direct control of the khanate, when Kuchlug besieged the Karluk city of Almaliq, the Karluks, vassals of the Mongol Empire, requested aid from Genghis Khan. The two armies traveled alongside each other through the Altai and Tarbagatai Mountains until arriving at Almaliq, at that point, Subutai turned southwest, destroying the Merkits and protecting Jebes flank against any sudden attacks from Khwarazm. Jebe relieved Almaliq, then moved south of Lake Balkash into the lands of the Qara Khitai, there, Jebe defeated an army of 30,000 troops and Kuchlug fled to Kashgar. Taking advantage of the unrest fomenting under Kuchlugs rule, Jebe gained support from the Muslim populace by announcing that Kuchlugs policy of persecution had ended. When Jebes army arrived at Kashgar in 1217, the populace revolted and turned on Kuchlug, Jebe pursued Kuchlug across the Pamir Mountains into Badakhshan in modern Afghanistan. According to Ata-Malik Juvayni, a group of hunters caught Kuchlug and handed him over to the Mongols, with the death of Kuchlug, the Mongol Empire secured control over the Qara Khitai. The Mongols now had a firm outpost in Central Asia directly bordering the Khwarazm Empire, relations with the Khwarazms would quickly break down, leading to the Mongol invasion of that territory. Empires of the Silk Road, A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present, Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press. The Empire of the Qara Khitai in Eurasian History, Between China, the Khyber Pass, A History of Empire and Invasion. New York City, Union Square Press, gabriel, Richard A. Genghis Khans Greatest General, Subotai the Valiant. New York City, Oxford University Press, United States, the History of The World Conqueror. Translated by John Andrew Boyle from Tarīkh-i Jahān-gushā, ed. Mohammad Ghazvini, Genghis Khan, Historys Greatest Empire Builder
Mongol conquest of the Qara Khitai
–
Qara Khitai in Asia, c. 1200 AD.
43.
Mongol invasion of China
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The Mongol invasion of China was a series of major military efforts by the Mongols to invade China proper. It spanned six decades in the 13th century and involved the defeat of the Jin dynasty, Western Xia, the Dali Kingdom, the Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan started the conquest with small-scale raids into Western Xia in 1205 and 1207. By 1279, the Mongol leader Kublai Khan had established the Yuan dynasty in China and crushed the last Song resistance and this was the first time in history that the whole of China was conquered and subsequently ruled by a foreign or non-native ruler. In the early 1200s, Temujin, soon to be Genghis Khan, began consolidating his power in Mongolia. Following the death of the Kerait leader Ong Khan to Temujins emerging Mongol Empire in 1203, Keriat leader Nilqa Senggum led a band of followers into Western Xia. However, after his adherents took to plundering the locals, Nilqa Senggum was expelled from Western Xia territory, using his rival Nilga Senggums temporary refuge in Western Xia as a pretext, Temujin launched a raid against the state in 1205 in the Edsin region. The Mongols plundered border settlements and one local Western Xia noble accepted Mongol supremacy, the next year,1206, Temujin was formally proclaimed Genghis Khan, ruler of all the Mongols, marking the official start of the Mongol Empire. In 1207, Genghis led another raid into Western Xia, invading the Ordo region and sacking Wuhai, in 1209, the Genghis undertook a larger campaign to secure the submission of Western Xia. The Mongols, at this point inexperienced at siege warfare, attempted to out the city by diverting the Yellow River. After their defeat in 1210, Western Xia served as vassals to the Mongol Empire for almost a decade. In 1219, Genghis Khan launched his campaign against the Khwarazmian dynasty in Central Asia, and requested military aid from Western Xia. However, the emperor and his military commander Asha refused to part in the campaign, stating that if Genghis had too few troops to attack Khwarazm. Infuriated, Genghis swore vengeance and left to invade Khwarazm, while Western Xia attempted alliances with the Jin, after defeating Khwarazm in 1221, Genghis prepared his armies to punish Western Xia for their betrayal, and in 1225 he attacked with a force of approximately 180,000. After taking Khara-Khoto, the Mongols began a steady advance southward, enraged by Western Xias fierce resistance, Genghis engaged the countryside in annihilative warfare and ordered his generals to systematically destroy cities and garrisons as they went. In August 1226, Mongol troops approached Wuwei, the second-largest city of the Western Xia empire, in Autumn 1226, Genghis took Liangchow, crossed the Helan Shan desert, and in November lay siege to Lingwu, a mere 30 kilometers from Yinchuan. Here, in the Battle of Yellow River, the Mongols destroyed a force of 300,000 Western Xia that launched a counter-attack against them, Yinchuan lay besieged for about six months, after which Genghis opened up peace negotiations while secretly planning to kill the emperor. However, in August 1227, Genghis died of an uncertain cause. In September 1227, Emperor Mozhu surrendered to the Mongols and was promptly executed, the Mongols then mercilessly pillaged Yinchuan, slaughtered the citys population, plundered the imperial tombs west of the city, and completed the effective annihilation the Western Xia state
Mongol invasion of China
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One of major battles at the Badger Mouth during the
Mongol–Jin War.
Mongol invasion of China
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The siege of Zhongdu (modern
Beijing) in 1213–14.
44.
Mongol conquest of Western Xia
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The Mongol conquest of Western Xia was a series of conflicts between the Mongol Empire and the Western Xia dynasty, also known as the Tangut Empire, or Minya. Hoping to gain both plunder and a vassal state, Mongol leader Genghis Khan commanded some initial raids against Western Xia before launching a full-scale invasion in 1209. This invasion marked both the first major invasion conducted by Genghis and the beginning of the Mongol invasion of China, angered by this betrayal, in 1225 Genghis Khan sent a second, punitive expedition into Western Xia. Near the end of the siege, in August 1227, Genghis Khan died from an uncertain cause, after his death, Yinchuan fell to the Mongols and most of its population was massacred. A fairly small state, Western Xia struggled for dominance with its larger and more neighbors, the Liao dynasty to the east and northeast. When the Jin dynasty emerged in 1115 and displaced the Liao, aiding Jin in their wars against the Song, Western Xia gained thousands of square miles of former Song territory. However, over many years the relations between Western Xia and Jin gradually declined, upon the death of its fourth ruler, Emperor Renzong, Emperor Huanzong took the throne and Western Xias power began to fail. Though militarily inferior to the neighboring Jin, the Western Xia still exerted a significant influence upon the northern steppes, the state often welcomed deposed Kerait leaders because of close trade connections to the steppes and because of the possibility of using the refugees as pawns in the Mongolian Plateau. In the late 1190s and early 1200s, Temujin, soon to be Genghis Khan, began consolidating his power in Mongolia. Following the death of the Keraites leader Ong Khan to Temujins emerging Mongol Empire in 1203, however, after his adherents took to plundering the locals, Nilqa Senggum was expelled from Western Xia territory. Using his rival Nilga Senggums temporary refuge in Western Xia as a pretext, the Mongols plundered border settlements and one local Western Xia noble accepted Mongol supremacy. During a raid on Ganzhou, the Mongols captured the son of the citys commander and this young boy joined Mongol service and took a Mongol name, Chagaan, and eventually rose through the ranks to become commander of Temujins personal guard. In 1207, Genghis led another raid into Western Xia, invading the Ordo region and sacking Wuhai, Genghis then began preparing for a full-scale invasion. By invading Western Xia, he would gain a tribute-paying vassal, furthermore, from Western Xia he could launch raids into the even more wealthy Jin dynasty. In 1209, Genghis undertook his campaign to actually conquer Western Xia, Li Anquan requested aid from the Jin dynasty, but the new Jin emperor Wanyan Yongji refused to send aid, stating that It is to our advantage when our enemies attack each other. Wherein lies the danger to us and his path now open, Genghis advanced to the capital. Well fortified, Yinchuan held about 150,000 soldiers, nearly twice the size of the Mongol army, one of their first endeavors at siege warfare, the Mongols lacked the proper equipment and experience to take the city. They arrived at the city in May, but by October were still unsuccessful at breaking through, Genghis attempted to flood the capital by diverting the river and its network of irrigation canals into the city, and by January 1210 the walls of Yinchuan were nearly breached
Mongol conquest of Western Xia
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China c. 1141, with Western Xia depicted in green
45.
Mongol conquest of the Jin dynasty
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The Mongol conquest of the Jin dynasty, also known as the Mongol–Jin War, was fought between the Mongol Empire and the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty in Manchuria and north China. The war, which started in 1211, lasted over 23 years, the Jurchen rulers of the Jin dynasty collected tribute from some of the nomadic tribes living on the Mongol steppes and encouraged rivalries among them. When the Mongols were unified under Khabul in the 12th century, the Jurchens encouraged the Tatars to destroy them, the Tatars eventually captured Khabuls successor, Ambaghai, and handed him over to the Jin imperial court. Emperor Xizong of the Jin dynasty ordered had Ambaghai executed by crucifixion, the Jin dynasty also conducted regular punitive expeditions against the Mongol nomads, either enslaving or killing them. In 1210, a delegation arrived at the court of Genghis Khan to proclaim the ascension of Wanyan Yongji to the Jin throne, because the Jurchens defeated the powerful steppe nomads and allied with the Keraites and the Tatars, they claimed sovereignty over all the tribes of the steppe. High court officials in the Jin government defected to the Mongols, but fearful of a trap or some other nefarious scheme, Genghis Khan refused. His defiance of the Jin envoys was tantamount to a declaration of war between the Mongols and Jurchens, after Genghis Khan returned to the Kherlen River, in the spring of 1211, he summoned a kurultai. By organising a long discussion, everyone in the community was included in the process, the Khan prayed privately on a nearby mountain. He removed his hat and belt, bowed down before the Eternal Sky and he explained that he had not sought this war against the Jurchens. At the dawn on the day, Genghis Khan emerged with the verdict, The Eternal Blue Sky has promised us victory. Wanyan Yongji, angry on hearing how Genghis Khan behaved, sent the message to the Khan that Our Empire is like the sea, yours is, when the conquest of the Tangut-led Western Xia empire started, there were multiple raids between 1207-1209. When the Mongols invaded Jin territory in 1211, Ala Qush, the first important battle between the Mongol Empire and the Jin dynasty was the Battle of Yehuling at a mountain pass in Zhangjiakou which took place in 1211. There, Wanyan Jiujin, the Jin field commander, made a mistake in not attacking the Mongols at the first opportunity. Instead, he sent a messenger to the Mongol side, Shimo Mingan, at this engagement, fought at Yehuling, the Mongols massacred thousands of Jin troops. The Mongols learnt at an age to always fight on the move. They would pass through towns to draw their opponent away from their animals, when they fell for the Mongol armys trap, the Mongols would kill them and take their animals. While Genghis Khan headed southward, his general Jebe travelled even further east into Manchuria, however, Genghis Khan was wounded by an arrow in his knee in 1212 after the Mongols returned from their relaxation in the borderlands between grass and the Gobi Desert. The Khitan leader Liu-ke had declared his allegiance to Genghis in 1212, the Mongols smashed the Jin armies, each numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and broke through Juyong Pass and Zijing Gap by November 1213
Mongol conquest of the Jin dynasty
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One of major battles at the Badger Mouth during the Mongol–Jin War.
Mongol conquest of the Jin dynasty
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Mongol cavalry battle Jin warriors
Mongol conquest of the Jin dynasty
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Ögedei (r.1229-41), the son of
Genghis Khan and the
Great Khan of the Mongols
46.
Mongol conquest of the Song dynasty
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The Mongol conquest of the Song dynasty under Kublai Khan was the final step for the Mongols to rule the whole of China under the Yuan dynasty. It is also considered the Mongol Empires last great military achievement, although Genghis Khan refused, on his death in 1227 he bequeathed a plan to attack the Jin capital by passing through Song territory. Subsequently, a Mongol ambassador was killed by the Song governor in uncertain circumstances, before receiving any explanation, the Mongols marched through Song territory to enter the Jins redoubt in Henan. In 1233 the Song dynasty finally became an ally of the Mongols, Song general Meng Gong defeated the Jin general Wu Xian and directed his troops to besiege the city of Caizhou, to which the last emperor of the Jurchen had fled. With the help of the Mongols, the Song armies were able to extinguish the Jin dynasty that had occupied northern China for more than a century. Thus the Mongol troops, headed by sons of the Ögedei Khan, started their slow and this combination resulted in one of the most difficult and prolonged wars of the Mongol conquests. A greater amount of resistance was put up by Korea. The Mongol force which invaded southern China was far greater than the force sent to invade the Middle East in 1256. Many Han Chinese defected to the Mongols to fight against the Jin, two Han Chinese leaders, Shi Tianze, Liu Heima, and the Khitan Xiao Zhala defected and commanded three Tumens in the Mongol army. Liu Heima and Shi Tianze served Ogödei Khan, Liu Heima and Shi Tianxiang led armies against Western Xia for the Mongols. There were 4 Han Tumens, with each Tumen consisting of 10,000 troops, the four Han Generals Zhang Rou, Yan Shi, Shi Tianze, and Liu Heima commanded the four Han tumens under Ogödei Khan. Shi Tianze was a Han Chinese who lived in the Jin dynasty, interethnic marriage between Han and Jurchen became common at this time. Shi Bingzhi was married to a Jurchen woman and a Han Chinese woman, Shi Tianze was married to two Jurchen women, a Han Chinese woman, and a Korean woman, and his son Shi Gang was born to one of his Jurchen wives. His Jurchen wives surnames were Mo-nien and Na-ho, his Korean wifes surname was Li, Shi Tianze defected to the Mongol Empires forces upon their invasion of the Jin dynasty. His son Shi Gang married a Kerait woman, the Kerait were Mongolified Turkic people and considered as part of the Mongol nation. Shi Tianze, Zhang Rou, and Yan Shi and other high ranking Chinese who served in the Jin dynasty, Chagaan and Zhang Rou jointly launched an attack on the Song dynasty ordered by Töregene Khatun. The Yuan dynasty created a Han Army out of defected Jin troops, in the early spring of 1227, Genghis Khan ordered a small fraction of the army to advance into Songs Circuit of Lizhou, in the name of attacking Jīn and W. Xia. The five zhous of Jie（階）, Feng （鳳）, Cheng（成）, He （和）, then the Mongols moved southward and seized Wénzhou（文州）
Mongol conquest of the Song dynasty
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Southern Song before Mongol World conquests
Mongol conquest of the Song dynasty
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Emperor Lizong of Song
Mongol conquest of the Song dynasty
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Mongol warrior on horseback, preparing a mounted archery shot.
Mongol conquest of the Song dynasty
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Kublai Khan, the
Great Khan of the Mongol Empire and Emperor of the
Yuan dynasty. Painting from 1294.
47.
Dali Kingdom
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King Duan Siping established its capital at Dali in 937 and 22 kings of his dynasty ruled it until 1253, when it was conquered during the Mongol invasion of the area. The invaders received help from the dynasty itself, which continued to rule the area afterwards as Mongol vassals, the Dali Kingdom was preceded by the Nanzhao dynasty, which was overthrown in 902. Three dynasties followed in succession before Duan Siping seized power in 937. Gao Shengtai forced the puppet king Duan Zhengming to abdicate and become a monk in 1095 and he returned the power to Duan Zhengchun and his family upon his death, after which it is also known as the Later Dali. Han Chinese ancestry was professed by the Duan clan and their Han ancestors originated from Wuwei in Gansu province 武威段氏. In 825 the monk Pulituoke came from India calling himself the holy Acuoye Guanyin from the western Lotus land, meng Longshun, the 11th king of Nanzhao, established Buddhism as the state religion. Ten of the 22 kings of Dali gave up the throne and it is said that the Mongols found a traitor who led them over the Cang Mountains along a secret path, and only in this way were they able to penetrate and overrun the Bai defenders. Thus ended three centuries of independence, in 1274 the Province of Yunnan was created by the Mongol Empire at the beginning of the Yuan dynasty. The Dali King Duan Xingzhi himself defected to the Mongols, the Duan family reigned in Dali while the Governors served in Kunming. After the Ming dynasty conquered Yunnan from the Yuan, The Duan royals were scattered in various distant areas of China by the Hongwu Emperor, media related to Kingdom of Dali at Wikimedia Commons
Dali Kingdom
–
Location of Dali (purple) in 1142
48.
Mongol invasions of Japan
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The Mongol invasions of Japan, which took place in 1274 and 1281, were major military efforts undertaken by Kublai Khan to conquer the Japanese archipelago after the submission of Goryeo to vassaldom. Ultimately a failure, the attempts are of macro-historical importance because they set a limit on Mongol expansion. The Mongol invasions are considered a precursor to modern warfare. One of the most notable innovations during the war was the use of explosive. After a series of Mongol invasions of Korea between 1231 and 1281, Goryeo signed a treaty in favor of the Mongols and became a vassal state, Kublai was declared Khagan of the Mongol Empire in 1260 and established his capital at Khanbaliq in 1264. The Mongols also made attempts to subjugate the peoples of Sakhalin—the Ainu, Orok. In 1266, Kublai Khan dispatched emissaries to Japan with a saying, Cherished by the Mandate of Heaven. The sovereigns of small countries, sharing borders with other, have for a long time been concerned to communicate with each other. Especially since my ancestor governed at heavens command, innumerable countries from afar disputed our power, Goryeo rendered thanks for my ceasefire and for restoring their land and people when I ascended the throne. Our relation is feudatory like a father and son and we think you already know this. Japan was allied with Goryeo and sometimes with China since the founding of your country, however and we are afraid that the Kingdom is yet to know this. Hence we dispatched a mission with our letter particularly expressing our wishes, enter into friendly relations with each other from now on. We think all countries belong to one family, how are we in the right, unless we comprehend this. Nobody would wish to resort to arms, Kublai essentially demanded that Japan become a vassal and send tribute under a threat of conflict. A second set of emissaries were sent in 1268, returning empty-handed like the first, after discussing the letters with his inner circle, there was much debate, but the Shikken had his mind made up, he had the emissaries sent back with no answer. The Mongols continued to send demands, some through Korean emissaries and some through Mongol ambassadors on March 7,1269, September 17,1269, September 1271, however, each time, the bearers were not permitted to land in Kyushu. The Imperial Court suggested compromise, but really had little effect in the matter, after acknowledging its importance, the Imperial Court led great prayer services, and much government business was put off to deal with this crisis. The Khan was willing to go to war as early as 1268 after having been rebuffed twice, Kublai Khan founded the Yuan dynasty in 1271
Mongol invasions of Japan
–
The
samurai Suenaga facing Mongol and Korean arrows and bombs
Mongol invasions of Japan
Mongol invasions of Japan
–
Letter from Kublai Khan to the "
King of Japan " (日本國王), written in
Classical Chinese (the
lingua franca in East Asia at the time), dated 8th Month, 1266. Now stored in
Tōdai-ji,
Nara,
Japan.
Mongol invasions of Japan
–
A stone defense wall, (
Genko Borui), in
Hakata, now
Fukuoka
49.
Mongol invasions of Vietnam
–
Although ultimately a failure for the Mongols, both the Trần dynasty and Champa decided to accept the nominal supremacy of the Yuan dynasty in order to avoid further conflicts. By the 1250s, the Mongol Empire controlled large amounts of Eurasia including much of Eastern Europe, Anatolia, North China, Mongolia, Manchuria, Central Asia, Tibet, möngke Khan planned to attack the Song dynasty in South China from three directions in 1259. Therefore, he ordered the prince Kublai to pacify the Dali Kingdom, after subjugating Dali, Kublai sent one column under Uriyangkhadai to the southeast. Uriyangkhadai sent envoys to demand the submission of Đại Việt, and this action led Uriyangkhadai and his son Aju to invade Đại Việt with 40,000 Mongols and 10,000 Yi people. The ancestors of the Trần clan originated from the province of Fujian and later migrated to Đại Việt under Trần Kinh 陳京, a Vietnamese woman and a Chinese man were the parents of Phạm Nhan. He fought against the Tran for the Yuan dynasty, dong Trieu was his mothers place. In 1258, a Mongol column under Uriyangkhadai, the son of Subutai, a battle was fought in which the Vietnamese used war elephants. Aju ordered his troops to fire arrows at the elephants feet, the animals turned in panic and caused disorder in the Đại Việt army, which was routed. The King of Đại Việt fled to an island. When they found their envoys in prison, one of whom died, in January 29,1258, Đại Việts Emperor Trần Thái Tông along with Prince Trần Hoảng counterattacked at Đông Bộ Đầu. The Mongols were surprised and defeated and they retreated completely from Đại Việt. According to historians, Hòe Nhai Pagoda in Ba Đình District, the following year, Uriyangkhadai returned to Đại Việt with an army of three thousand Mongols and ten thousand local troops from the conquered Kingdom of Dali, now the Yuan province of Yunnan. He led this army into Song China, and fought his way to the Yangtze River, the Vietnamese had submitted unwillingly, and were reluctant vassals. The Vietnamese emperor repeatedly ignored demands to attend the Yuan court, nevertheless, according to the history of the Yuan dynasty, the Trần court sent tribute every three years and received a darughachi. By 1266, however, a developed, as the Emperor Thánh Tông sought a loose tributary relationship. Trần Thánh Tông sent a letter requiring Kublai to take his darughachi back. Because of civil war in the Mongol Empire, and the Yuan conquest of Song China, instead, Kublai reminded him of the peace treaty signed by the Mongols and Đại Việt. As a result of the Mongol conquest of the Song Empire, by 1278–79, some former Song officials fled to Đại Việt and Champa, former vassals of Song China, during the final stage of Mongolian conquest of China
Mongol invasions of Vietnam
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The
Battle of Bạch Đằng (1288) during the Third Mongol invasion
Mongol invasions of Vietnam
–
Kublai Khan, the fifth
Great Khan of the
Mongol Empire, and the founder of the
Yuan dynasty
50.
Mongol invasions of India
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The Mongol Empire launched several invasions into the Indian subcontinent from 1221 to 1327, with many of the later raids made by the unruly Qaraunas of Mongol origin. The Mongols occupied parts of modern Pakistan and other parts of Punjab for decades, the Mughal Empire founded by Babur, however, successfully conquered most of the Indian subcontinent in the 16th and the 17th centuries. After pursuing Jalal ad-Din into India from Samarkand and defeating him at the battle of Indus in 1221, the Mongol commander Bala chased Jalal ad-Din throughout the Punjab region and attacked outlying towns like Bhera and Multan and had even sacked the outskirts of Lahore. Jalal ad-Din regrouped, forming an army from survivors of the battle and sought an alliance, or even an asylum, with the Turkic rulers of Delhi Sultanate. Jalal ad-Din fought against the rulers in the Punjab, and usually defeated them in the open. Local tribes of Punjab came in his service, like the tribe of the Salt Range. The Khokhar Rais son joined Jalal ad-Dins army along with his clansmen, Jalal ad-Dins soldiers were under his officers Uzbek Pai and Hassan Qarlugh. Jalal ad-Din was also joined by forces from Ghor and Peshawar, including members of the Khilji, Turkoman, with his new allies he marched on Ghazni and defeated a Mongol division under Turtai, which had been assigned the task of hunting him down. The victorious allies quarreled over the division of the booty, subsequently the Khilji, Turkoman. By this time Ögedei Khan, third son of Genghis Khan, had become Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, a Mongol general named Chormaqan sent by the Khan attacked and defeated him, thus ending the Khwārazm-Shāh dynasty. Some time after 1235 another Mongol force invaded Kashmir, stationing a darughachi there for several years, around the same time, a Kashmiri Buddhist master, Otochi, and his brother Namo arrived at the court of Ögedei. Another Mongol general named Pakchak attacked Peshawar and defeated the army of tribes who had deserted Jalal ad-Din but were still a threat to the Mongols and these men, mostly Khiljis, escaped to Multan and were recruited into the army of the Delhi Sultanate. In winter 1241 the Mongol force invaded the Indus valley and besieged Lahore, however, on December 30,1241, the Mongols under Munggetu butchered the town before withdrawing from the Delhi Sultanate. At the same time the Great Khan Ögedei died, however, the Kashmiri king killed Otochi at Srinagar. Sali invaded Kashmir, killing the king, and put down the rebellion, the Delhi prince, Jalal al-Din Masud, traveled to the Mongol capital at Karakorum to seek the assistance of Möngke Khan in seizing the throne from his elder brother in 1248. When Möngke was crowned as Great Khan, Jalal al-Din Masud attended the ceremony, Möngke ordered Sali to assist him to recover his ancestral realm. Sali made successive attacks on Multan and Lahore, sham al-Din Muhammad Kart, the client malik of Herat, accompanied the Mongols. Jalal al-Din was installed as client ruler of Lahore, Kujah, in 1257 the governor of Sindh offered his entire province to Hulagu Khan, Mongkes brother, and sought Mongol protection from his overlord in Delhi
Mongol invasions of India
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Alauddin Khilji (D. 1316), The Turkic ruler of Delhi.
Mongol invasions of India
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Genghis Khan
Mongol invasions of India
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The
Mongol Empire during the reign of Mongke Khan (r.1251-59)
Mongol invasions of India
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Timur defeats the
Sultan of Delhi, Nasir Al-Din Mahmum Tughluq, in the winter of 1397–1398
